The role of the vagus nerve in emotional burnout

Background. Emotional burnout is a form of professional deformation of personality. Among the main symptoms of the new disease are cynicism, apathy, reduced productivity, difficulties in communication with colleagues and patients, embitterment. Emotional burnout, first of all, is a mechanism of psychological defence in the form of partial or complete exclusion of emotions in response to certain psychotraumatic factors related to the profession. At the same time, isolated, long-lasting uncoordinated actions of the nervous system can lead to stable increase of imbalance in the autonomic nervous system, which is known to consist of two main branches – sympathetic and parasympathetic. The main component of the parasympathetic system is the vagus nerve. To perform this study, we relied on the polyvagal theory of S. Porges. The polyvagal theory of S. Porges considers the vagus nerve as two structurally and functionally separate branches – ventral and dorsal. The autonomic nervous system in emotional burnout reacts to bodily sensations and environmental stimuli by means of three neural circuits: dorsal, ventral and sympathetic.

Results. The correlation between the semantics of the text of V. Boyko's questionnaire "Methodology of diagnostics of the level of emotional burnout" and the way of vegetative nervous system reaction has been established. The possibility of additional interpretation of the questionnaire results suggested by us expands the prospect of its use in clinical practice. It gives an opportunity to take a more differentiated approach to treatment and prevention of emotional burnout by comparing the indicators of dorsal, ventral and sympathetic neural circuits. The obtained data allow to assert that the specific anatomical structure of origin of dysfunctional consequences of emotional burnout is the dorsal branch of the vagus nerve.

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