Stephen Porges

Stephen W. Porges (born 1945) is an American psychologist. He is the Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Porges is currently Director of the Kinsey Institute Traumatic Stress Research Consortium at Indiana University Bloomington, which studies trauma. He was previously a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, where he was director of the Brain-Body Center at the College of Medicine, and at the University of Maryland.

He served as president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research (1993-1994) and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (1999-2002) and is a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award.

He is the author of more than 400 peer-review journal articles across several disciplines including anesthesiology, biomedical engineering, critical care medicine, ergonomics, exercise physiology, gerontology, neurology, neuroscience, obstetrics, pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, psychometrics, space medicine, and substance abuse.

In 1994 he proposed the Polyvagal Theory, a systems-level, pathway-specific framework of autonomic regulation. Polyvagal Theory is a trans-disciplinary synthesis weaving together evolutionary biology, neurophysiology, observable behavior, and clinical insights into a framework for understanding how our nervous system states drive our behavior in the world and with one another. It has had a broad clinical influence, offering linguistic framing and conceptual and descriptive texture to phenomena observed in clinical and therapeutic contexts.

Polyvagal Theory distinguishes two vagal systems with differentiated vagal efferent pathways, functional integration, and regulatory roles. This model updates prior autonomic physiology conceptualizations predicated on the notion of autonomic balance.

The theory has generated controversy, with social neuroscientists questioning its measurement assertions, neuro-anatomy and functions of major brainstem nuclei, evolution of the vagus nerve, claims about mammalian social behavior in relation to non mammalian vertebrates, and interpretations of earlier physiological literature. Porges has responded to these claims.