Dear Brice, you are right that none of the "polyvagal" premises by Porges specifically address social behavior. Premise 5 comes closest by suggesting relations to the primary expression of emotions but never mentions anything specifically social. In addition to the other unconfirmed or likely refuted premises, there seems to be no consideration of the complexities of social functioning treated in Porges' basic speculations of the "polyvagal". Another interesting point. 

Dear Paul,

Thank you very much for your answer. Indeed there is is this "primary emotions" thing. This may be the sign that more details are needed about the link between physiology, emotions, and social behavior.

I feel that one of the core messages of the polyvagal theory (if we try to forget all the suppositions concerning the vagus) is the link between "physiological flexibility" and "prosociality".

It is likely that the development of this hypothesis could be useful to propose a general framework for social psychophysiology (e.g. Taborsky & Oliveira 2012). However, a strong work is needed to associate physiology,  ecology, and social psychology in an unified framework.

The strange thing seems to be this strong and easy focus on the vagus. I am afraid that there is sometimes more fashion than science in the vagus/hrv psychology literature. I admit that few years ago I have been very seduced by this framework myself. However, as you mentioned several times, it is time to switch to a more rigorous approach.

I have been very happy to see fantastic efforts in the methodological domain (e.g. Quintana, Alvares & Heathers 2016). I really hope that it will contribute to high quality research in social psychophysiology. How do you see the future of a potential theoretical framework, liberated from false beliefs at all organization (physiological, social, etc...) levels ?

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Taborsky, B., & Oliveira, R. F. (2012). Social competence: an evolutionary approach. Trends in ecology & evolution, 27(12), 679-688.

Quintana, D. S., Alvares, G. A., & Heathers, J. A. J. (2016). Guidelines for Reporting Articles on Psychiatry and Heart rate variability (GRAPH): Recommendations to advance research communication. Translational psychiatry, 6(5), e803.

Dear Mr. Beffara,

Have you checked this book?

"The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation" Stephen W. Porges.

or same author's article?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1868418/

Best wishes

Dear Mr. Develi,

Indeed, I checked the book and the articles. Here is a list of the main theoretical articles for everyone :

Porges, S. W. (1995). Orienting in a defensive world: Mammalian modifications of our evolutionary heritage. A polyvagal theory. Psychophysiology, 32(4), 301-318.

Porges, S. W. (2001). The polyvagal theory: phylogenetic substrates of a social nervous system. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 42(2), 123-146.

Porges, S. W. (2003). The polyvagal theory: Phylogenetic contributions to social behavior. Physiology & behavior, 79(3), 503-513.

Porges, S. W. (2007). The polyvagal perspective. Biological psychology, 74(2), 116-143.

Porges, S. W., & Furman, S. A. (2011). The early development of the autonomic nervous system provides a neural platform for social behaviour: A polyvagal perspective. Infant and child development, 20(1), 106-118.

Best wishes

Any serious psychophysiological hypotheses must then first be based on sound physiology before concocting broad theories of how behavior or aspects of the psyche can be explained by physiology (if one feels that to be necessary). 

Dear Paul,

I agree. I also think that the interaction between different levels of organizations in living organisms is important to understand. However, it is true that psychobiology deserves more rigorous integration of connected research fields such as evolutionary biology or physiology. Concerning social behaviors, I feel that we could also benefit from an integration of (among others) behavioral ecology, ethology, and social psychology results. I believe that in the context of evolution, we cannot propose a framework isolating humans' behaviors from other animals'.

This can appear to be a bit out of topic, but in my opinion, there is also a strong effort to make in terms of epistemology to provide rigorous psychobiological frameworks. We can ask ourselves what is it we want to understand (behavior ? emotion ? cognition ?) and therefore start realizing that understanding physiology might require understanding general physiology rooted in the living world, not anthropocentric physiology (e.g. see Boero, 2014; Piaget, 1979; Skinner, 1966, West et al., 2011; Stanley & Adolphs, 2013). For instance, the work of Taylor and collaborators (2014) is a very good example of this approach in my view.

In conclusion, if psychophysiology is wanted to be more aware of related disciplines, it is likely that a strong epistemological reflexion should underlie the transformation. Obviously, this is my understanding of the problem, but I would suggest that a better understanding of behavioral physiology will go through a decentralization of psychophysiology from an anthropocentric approach to a more "zoocentric" one.

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Boero, Ferdinando. (2014) Humans are animals, Italian Journal of Zoology,

81:1, 1-1, DOI: 10.1080/11250003.2014.909646

Piaget, Jean. "Relations between psychology and other sciences." Annual review of psychology 30.1 (1979): 1-9

Skinner, Burrhus F. "The phylogeny and ontogeny of behavior." Science 153.3741 (1966): 1205-1213

Stanley, Damian A., and Ralph Adolphs. "Toward a neural basis for social behavior." Neuron 80.3 (2013): 816-826.

Taylor, E. W., Leite, C. A., Sartori, M. R., Wang, T., Abe, A. S., & Crossley, D. A. (2014). The phylogeny and ontogeny of autonomic control of the heart and cardiorespiratory interactions in vertebrates. Journal of Experimental Biology, 217(5), 690-703.

West, Stuart A., Claire El Mouden, and Andy Gardner. "Sixteen common misconceptions about the evolution of cooperation in humans." Evolution and Human Behavior 32.4 (2011): 231-262.

Thanks Brice. I fully agree with you, but the issue is mammoth! That is why we really need to cross disciplinary boundaries in a very careful manner--and with the help and cooperation of real experts in the different fields: Theorizing about zoocentric vs. anthropocentric epistemological orientations is very valuable, but, in my opinion, it is all too easy to be persuaded by suppositions and speculations when the questions are so complex and we have so little understanding from all sides.

The polyvagal idea is a fascinating case in point: educated people want so badly to find a way of explaining relations between biology and behavior that they go for a narrative whose fundamental premises are not only unsupported but appear to be refuted; they develop a metaphor of zoocentric relations that strongly seems to be without substance and wrong, and then they stick to it, even in the face of overwhelming levels of contradiction.

We, as scientists, also tend to ignore the tenuousness and complexity of our own empirical results, often confusing significant differences based on normative data as fundamental differences between populations and/or experimental conditions when our own findings may be p

I think the problem is even more basic. There appears to be a lot of confusion in a lot of researchers I talk with and in published scientific articles about what respiratory sinus arrhythmia, high-frequency heart rate variability, cardiac vagal control, vagal tone, autonomic flexibility, etc. mean and how they relate to each other. I think it is important to make clear that these are different levels of observation, analysis and interpretation. Let me try to outline this from my point of view and how these concepts are distinct but relate to each other:

1. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is simply the phenomenon that cardiologists first observed, that the heart rate accelerates and decelerates with inspiration and expiration. The underlying physiology is well understood (respiratory gating of the sino-atrial node, instating a vagal brake during expiration and slowing the heart rate down from its intrinsic, higher rhythm).

2. High-frequency heart rate variability is an attempt of quantification of this phenomenon using spectral analysis for calculating the spectral power density across the frequency band where respiration typically occurs (0.15 - 0.50 Hz). There are many other ways of quantifying RSA (Grossman's peak-valley method, Porges' polynomial filtering, RMSSD, complex demodulation, transfer function analysis of respiration and HR, etc.) and they are largely equivalent in practice in my experience and in published work (e.g. in a paper of Paul Grossman and coauthors in the 90s). There are subtle differences though, e.g., the peak-valley method and transfer function analysis make sure that the variance in the HR signal is really due to respiration and not due to other sources (thus, a definitive quantification of RESPIRATORY sinus arrhythmia). Complex demodulation makes no assumption about stationarity of the HR signal, like, e.g., spectral analysis, which can only handle steady-state conditions (see e.g., Wilhelm, Grossman, and Roth (2005). Assessment of heart rate variability during alterations in stress: complex demodulation vs. spectral analysis. Biomedical Sciences Instrumentation, 41, 346-351.). RMSSD is somewhat of a mixed bag because it may or may not relate well to breathing rhythms.

3. "Cardiac vagal control" is a direct interpretation of RSA referring to the underlying physiology without making any other assumption. The acceleration and deceleration in HR related to breathing is clearly due to phasic cardiac vagal control. Thus, this term is a conservative interpretation of RSA data without any speculative component.

4. "Vagal tone" is a quite liberal interpretation of RSA data that may in many instances be false or too speculative. Paul Grossman's methodological and review papers have shown this convincingly.

5. "Autonomic flexibility", "emotion regulation", "rumination", "socially expressive behavior", etc. are constructs that have been related to RSA based on low-to-moderate correlations (and not taking the file-drawer effect into account).

So it appears that from a pragmatic point of view it is always adequate to measure RSA appropriately (best not only based on the HR signal but also with some kind of respiratory information) and interpret it as a correlate or predictor for psychological and health outcomes. There is much literature across psychophysiology, psychosomatic medicine, behavioral medicine, cardiology, health psychology, and clinical psychology/psychiatry that clearly demonstrates the usefulness of this approach. In the discussion sections of articles there is of course room for interpreting such results and only there some of the speculative interpretations (4., 5., etc.), with good arguments and adequate boundary conditions, may be appropriate.

Sorry for the delay of my response. Thank you very much for your answers. I'm glad to have the opportunity to discuss this topic and I agree with most of your points.

I would like to insist on the following aspect: I think it's important to remember that behaviour IS a biological phenomenon. Behaviour is biological whether we study the related specific physiological mechanisms or not.

As you said, it is hard to understand the local physiological underpinnings of global behaviours. It is true that a lot of confusion appears when dealing with HRV, RSA, autonomic flexibility, vagal tone, etc... and it has been well documented.

Concerning my initial concern, there is also (in my opinion) a lot of confusion concerning the "social" part of the polyvagal theory. The study of social behaviours deserve as much precision as cardiac physiology and I find difficult to understand the cardiac correlates of sociality if sociality is not well defined and operationalised. I think that (cardiac) social psychophysiology is possible in a KIND OF polyvagal perspective but we are far from it because of a lack of precision both at the cardiac physiology and "sociality" levels.

Brice - I believe that emotional connection theory, together with calming cycle theory provide the theoretical premises that other, including Paul Grossman, have been looking for. Please read my new pre-posted paper (Darwin's other dilemmas and the theoretical roots of emotional connection) and let me know if you agree, or if you still have questions. We are in the process of analizing data from our clinical trials to support our new theories.