The headline is broadly defensible, but the qualifications matter. Effect sizes vary by population, the strongest claims rest on shorter trials, and credible voices push back on how it's typically framed.
So that beautiful picture of self-directed adaptive plasticity in adulthood is allowed to happen because the vagus nerve, in part, is triggering NTS to say, "Hey, locus coeruleus, nucleus basalis, wake up. Release norepinephrine. Release acetylcholine. Now is the time to learn."
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Native comments, Twitter mentions, and Reddit threads about this claim — surfaced together so the conversation isn't fragmented across platforms.
Bookmarking — the dossier-vs-overview split is the right call. Most of the time I want overview; sometimes I want receipts.
Would love a "what would change this verdict" RSS feed. Sign me up if it exists.
Studies in healthy humans and humans who have had, for instance, stroke, as well as animal studies, have shown that if you stimulate the vagus nerve electrically, you increase the level of alertness in the brain. And part of the mechanism by which you do that is the one I told you about a few minutes ago: the adrenals, vagus, locus coeruleus; but also, there's a separate pathway from the NTS to nucleus basalis that stimulates the release of acetylcholine from nucleus basalis and opens up the opportunity for neural plasticity.