When Traditional Chinese Medicine Meets AI: A Novel Depression Treatment Paradigm based on Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation

As one of the non-pharmacological methods for treating major depressive disorder (MDD), transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) has been demonstrated to be utilized to relieve the depression symptoms. However, it is still a challenge to evaluate the therapeutic effect of tVNS. The existing studies mainly use scales and subjective interviews to assess depression treatment. The limitation of these methods is that they do not provide a precise and real-time assessment for therapeutic efforts. To this end, we have integrated embedded systems and machine learning models for depression classification to implement the tVNS system based on bioinformatic feedback. It not only stimulates the vagus nerve through electroacupuncture, but also offers a real-time evaluation of depression symptoms by prefrontal electroencephalography (EEG).