SONA — AI-powered vagus nerve stimulator

If you've been listening to the show for a while, you'll know the vagus nerve comes up a lot — it's the main communication line between the brain and the body, and the key player in shifting us out of fight-or-flight and into the parasympathetic — or rest-and-repair — state. What makes this space so interesting right now is that stimulating the vagus nerve used to mean an implanted device, prescribed for conditions like epilepsy. Then researchers found that one branch of the nerve reaches the skin of the outer ear — the only place on the surface of the body where it can be reached without surgery — and that discovery has opened the door to non-invasive, ear-based devices like this one.

SONA sits in your ear like an earbud and delivers gentle electrical pulses to that auricular branch, while sensors track your heart rate and breathing through the session. That's the part that's new: rather than fixed pulses, it reads your body's response — including heart rate variability, a useful marker of how adaptable your nervous system is — and adjusts the stimulation accordingly. That's what the "AI-powered" label refers to.

I've ordered my own, and of all the health tech I've covered this is the piece I'm most excited to try: a research-grade idea packed into an everyday earbud. Once it arrives and I've had a few weeks with it, I'll share how it fits into an evening wind-down and what my own data shows, on the show and in the newsletter.