Abstract
Berthoud and Neuhuber review the anatomy of vagal afferents: which organs they reach, how they signal, and how that traffic can drive autonomic, endocrine, and behavioural responses, including affective ones.
The shelf use is narrow. Upward traffic from the body is a real sensory system, not a metaphor you invented in a hard hour. The review does not establish a percentage of “all information” in a human life, and it does not say the body lies.
Berthoud, H.-R., & Neuhuber, W. L. (2000). Functional and chemical anatomy of the afferent vagal system. Autonomic Neuroscience, 85(1–3), 1–17. DOI
Key findings
- Afferent reach — Vagal afferents innervate thoracic and abdominal organs and can initiate central reflex responses, not only local sensation.
- Affective route — The review ties part of that traffic to nociception and to emotional responses mediated through limbic pathways. Fiber-count slogans are outside its claim.
Application
When a body signal arrives inside a demand, treat it as afferent data to interpret — useful, partial, and not a verdict that eighty percent of the hour has already been decided. Pair with Price of complexity only as a neighbouring question of who pays attention, not as a finding of this paper.