>Feeling heart-broken? Feeling angry and frustrated? Feeling sunken and collapsed? Feeling energized and happy? All of these feelings will have had their origin as sensations from vagus nerve.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of everything to do with neurology. There is simply no way to write a point by point rebuttal of how much is wrong in this article.
The real shame is that reading about the different systems that do give rise to these feelings is actually really interesting.
That's the only one that I don't believe models our physiology in a useful way. The rest match up with some of the stuff I've read/watched.
Watch some videos by Robert Sapolsky on YouTube. He's a neurostuff prof at Stanford. Good presentations.
There's "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9H9qTdserM
Also an actual academic lecture on the Limbic System which contextualizes & clarifies some of the other assertions in the OP blog post. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAOnSbDSaOw
There are more but hopefully YouTube's algorithm helps you out there. The Stanford lecture series is very interesting though Sapolsky doesn't deliver all the lectures.
edit: The only plausible, good faith explanation of the amygdala-empathy claim I can think of is that there are facial recognition studies designed to activate the amygdala https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4979579/ that showed some correlation between anxiety levels and ACC-amygdala connectivity. The ACC, or anterior cingulate cortex, is held to be responsible for empathy. So it may be an interpretation of that knowledge the author is talking about. I know that facial recognition tests are used for evaluation of empathy, sexual attraction and so on. This is probably the kernel of accuracy in the claim.
Or there may be other science on the topic that reaches a conclusion closer to what the author said.
The linked study is extremely interesting read.
I worry about this every time I read a "practical" article about the brain. Can anyone tell if the main points in this article is generally accepted in the scientific community?