The vagus nerve is essential to many bodily processes, including digestion and a steady heart rate. Stimulating it could help prevent or stop chronic inflammation, which is linked to disease. An ...

The vagus nerve is the body’s longest cranial nerve, extending from the brain to the gut, says Dr. Janna Gordon-Elliott, a psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian.

A group of Texas-based researchers has developed an effective way to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that involves zapping the vagus nerve around the neck, using a device the size of a ...

Cutaneous mastocytosis is a rare skin disorder caused by excess mast cells, primarily affecting children. Learn about its symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and management. Menu.

Vagus nerve stimulation therapy improved the symptoms of treatment-resistant depression for nearly 500 participants in a major clinical trial.

In 1664 English neuroanatomist Thomas Willis named the longest of the brain’s nerves the vagus, Latin for “wandering.” “We call it the vagus nerve, singular, but there are actually two ...

The Power of the Vagus Nerve. The vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic nervous system, often called the “rest and digest” system because it helps the body relax after periods of stress ...

The vagus nerve is one of 13 nerves that leave the brain directly through special holes in the skull. From there it sprouts thickets of branches that reach almost everywhere in the head and trunk.

The longest nerve in the body, it wends its way from the brain throughout the head and trunk, issuing commands to our organs and receiving sensations from them.

Auditory nerves conduct acoustic information for hearing. The best that early anatomists could do with this nerve, however, was to call it the “vagus,” from the Latin for “wandering.” The wandering ...