The Vagus Nerve

The term vagus nerve is actually shorthand for thousands of fibres. They're organized into two bundles that run from the brain stem, down through each side the neck and into the torso branching out to touch our internal organs. The word vagus means wandering in latin. Vagus nerve picks up information about how the organs are functioning and also sends information from the brainstem back to the body. For those reasons, the vaguest nerve, the longest of the 12 cranial nerves, is sometimes referred to as an information highway.