Research partnerships · 2026
Pulsetto is looking for researchers who want to find out what non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation can really do.
The vagus nerve sits underneath sleep, stress, pain and recovery — and the evidence base is still young. We would rather build it with you than claim it on our own.
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A non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation device worn on the neck. Bilateral cervical placement, programme durations set by protocol, built for repeated unsupervised use at home — which is what makes longitudinal and decentralised designs practical.
Electrodes sit on both sides of the neck over the cervical vagus — a segment carrying afferent and efferent fibres, and roughly 5–6× more Aβ-fibres than the ear.
Hands-free, no clinician present. Session length varies by programme. Adherence and dose delivered are logged in the app and exportable as an objective compliance measure.
Identical in appearance and operation to the active device. This is the reason most investigators come to us rather than buying retail hardware.
Pulsetto is currently marketed as a general wellness product and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Devices supplied under a research partnership are provided for research purposes only, and must be used solely within the scope of the approved study protocol.
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Stimulation reaches the cervical vagus through a distributed electric field, not direct electrode–nerve contact. The device pairs over Bluetooth with a dedicated phone app, where a set of distinct stimulation programmes can be selected and run. A protocol can therefore specify exactly which programme participants use and how often — and the app logs every session, so adherence is recorded rather than self-reported.
Bilateral placement over the approximate course of the cervical vagus. Vagal afferents terminate in the nucleus tractus solitarius; efferent output arises from the dorsal motor nucleus and nucleus ambiguus — cervical placement engages both directions.
Non-invasive VNS is rising in popularity as a research direction — many researchers in neuromodulation, and many doctors helping patients daily, believe that nVNS could be the future of autonomic regulation treatments. The device itself is deliberately undramatic: a collar worn on the neck, sending gentle pulses through the skin to reach the vagus nerve where it runs closest to the surface. No implant, no clinic visit, no needles.
Pulsetto was created from the desire to blend technology and neuroscience to help as many people live a lower-stress life. Help us create that future.
Read it in full
An educational overview of non-invasive cervical VNS: how the vagus nerve carries signals between body and brain, why fibre type and stimulation site change what a protocol can claim, where the field currently stands in research and regulation, and what our own pilot work found across symptom measures and stress biomarkers. Written for a scientific reader, and careful about the difference between what the evidence shows and what it merely suggests.
Download PDF →The deck we walk investigators through on a first call. It covers what separates cervical from auricular stimulation, how we model the electric field the device produces in tissue, what our core studies have found so far, and where the regulatory work currently stands.
Published evidence
Ahmed, Coello, Pillutla, Telwar, Stauss
Cervical — but not auricular — stimulation lowered systolic blood pressure (~134 → ~124 mmHg), with a trend toward increased frontal alpha. No heart rate change.
40 adults, four weeks, unilateral vs. bilateral. PHQ-9 −55.9%, GAD-7 −45.3%, PSQI −41.0%. Hair cortisol fell significantly with bilateral stimulation only. Not powered for efficacy.
Six weeks, observational. Migraine frequency −40.35% and pain intensity −42.46% (p < 0.001 both); pain days −27.66%.
Open-label pilot. Joint pain dropped significantly pre- to post-stimulation (p < 0.001); morning spinal stiffness and mobility improved in most participants.
Before–after analysis of wearable-derived sleep in users reaching 7–28 day streaks. Uncontrolled — useful for adherence patterns and effect direction when powering a trial.
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Everything below is our in-kind contribution. You own the protocol, the data and the authorship.
Sham units are visually and operationally identical to active ones, so participants — and where your design requires it, assessors — cannot tell them apart. Quantity follows your power calculation, matched one to one for any blinded arm. A white-label version of the device is also available if your study calls for it.
Active and sham units free of charge. We handle international shipping, customs, and delivery to your site.
The app can pull alongside data from Oura, WHOOP, Apple Watch, Google Health and others, so HRV, sleep and recovery metrics can run as a secondary endpoint stream without you standing up separate infrastructure.
A dedicated dashboard lets your team watch participant data arrive as the study runs, rather than waiting until the end to find out whether adherence held. Everything is exportable — adherence, session timing, dose actually delivered — which doubles as an objective compliance measure.
We can support your publication process, and we particularly like working with early-career researchers. Worth raising when we first speak so we can work out what would be useful.
Depending on the design and what we set out in the agreement, there may be scope to discuss a contribution toward study costs. Bring it up in the first conversation and we will tell you honestly what is and is not possible.
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Where we think cervical nVNS is worth testing next. If your question sits outside this list, tell us anyway — the list is a starting point, not a filter.
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You own the science. We supply the hardware and the technical depth behind it. Five steps from first email to publication.
We talk through your study idea and the population you have in mind. We can also send you a device to try yourself before anything is decided.
You write and own it. We supply parameters, modelling data, and prior-study detail so your methods section is complete.
You take it through your own IRB. We provide whatever device documentation, safety data, and technical files the committee asks for.
Matched active and sham units shipped free of charge, typically four weeks or more before screening opens. White-label units are an option too.
Authorship and publication rights remain yours.
Calling all researchers
If Pulsetto is the wrong tool for your study, we would rather tell you early. If it is the right one, we will get units to your site.
Or reach us at [email protected]
© 2025 Pulsetto. All Rights Reserved.
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