Andrew Huberman· PhD
Despite being classified as a parasympathetic pathway, there are powerful excitatory motor outputs of the vagus as well as pathways that stimulate much higher levels of alertness.
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The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
Despite being classified as a parasympathetic pathway, there are powerful excitatory motor outputs of the vagus as well as pathways that stimulate much higher levels of alertness.
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both experimentally and clinically if the vagus nerve is stimulated you get exactly the opposite effect you get arousal effects
The vagus nerve is classified as a parasympathetic nerve. However, it's a bit of a misnomer because, as you'll soon realize, there are pathways within the vagus nerve that, were you to activate these pathways within the vagus nerve, you would become more alert, not less alert.
However, for everybody out there, med student or not, just understand that when you activate certain branches of the vagus nerve, you're either going to get an elevation in alertness, that is, an increase in sympathetic nervous system activity, or a decrease in alertness, that is, an elevation in parasympathetic activity, depending on which branch you activate and the context matters.