Neurocardiology and the brain in the heart

[Teacher]

A growing body of research shows that our heart is not just a mechanical pump. Recently, the field of neurocardiology has been actively developing, demonstrating that the heart is actually a very complex, self-organizing information processing center with its own functional "brain" connected with the brain in the head and influencing it with the help of the nervous system, hormonal system, and so on. Further. Thus, the activity of the heart has a powerful effect on the function of the brain and almost all the vital organs of the body. This has a significant impact on our inner state and thus on the quality of our life.

Just like the enteric nervous system, the heart's complex “circuitry” allows it to act independently of the brain in the head - to learn, remember, and even feel. The recent book Basic and Clinical Neurocardiology, edited by Dr. Andrew Armor and Dr. Jeffrey Ardell, offers a comprehensive overview of the function of the heart's autonomic nervous system and the role of central and peripheral neurons in the regulation of cardiac function.

One of the pioneers of neurocardiology, Dr. Armor, shows that the heart has an internal nervous system complex enough to be called a separate "little brain." The nervous system of the heart contains about 40,000 neurons called sensory axons. They trap circulating hormones and neurochemicals and monitor your heart rate and blood pressure. The nervous system of the heart translates information about hormones, chemicals, heart rate and pressure into neurological impulses and sends them to the brain.

Thus, the heart has its own internal nervous system that operates and processes information independently of the brain or central nervous system. This is why a transplanted heart works. Usually, the heart communicates with the brain through tissues along the vagus nerve and spinal column. In a transplanted heart, these nerve connections are restored very slowly, if at all. However, the transplanted heart can function in a new “home” because it has its own integral nervous system.

The reports of many heart transplant patients provide amazing evidence that the "brain of the heart" is capable of storing memories and influencing behavior. For example, Dr. Mario Alonso Pugh, general practitioner (and abdominal) surgeon, has been a Principal Surgeon at Harvard Medical School for over twenty-five years and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He reports one heart transplant patient. After the operation, the patient began to exhibit unusual behavior. He fell in love with dishes that he had never loved before. He became a fan of music that he had never liked before. He was drawn to places that he knew nothing about and did not remember.

The heart has its own internal nervous system that functions autonomously from the brain.

The mystery was revealed when the doctors found out what kind of life was the donor, whose heart was transplanted to the patient. It turned out that the patient began to love the food that the donor preferred; in addition, the donor was a musician and played in a style that the patient suddenly fell in love with, and the places to which the patient was drawn were significant in the donor's life. Due to strict confidentiality rules, neither the patient nor the doctors previously had access to information about the donor or his personal history. Perhaps, in some way, the donor's preferences were transmitted to the patient along with his heart.

There are quite a few similar examples. Claire Sylvia is another heart transplant patient. She wrote the book A Change of Heart (1997), where she describes her experience. She writes that on May 29, 1988, she received a heart transplant from an 18-year-old boy who died in a car accident. Soon after the operation, she began to notice changes in her habits and tastes.She found that she often began to behave like a man, she had a masculine gait (she used to be a dancer and usually walked in a completely different way). She suddenly fell in love with hot peppers and beer, which she had never loved before. She even began to have recurring dreams about a mysterious man named "Tim L." She began to think that that was the name of her donor. And she was right. After meeting with the “family of her heart,” as she called her, Sylvia discovered that her donor's name was indeed Tim L. and her new tastes and habits matched those of the donor.

In The Heart's Code (1998), Dr. Paul Pearsell provides other illustrative examples based on 73 heart transplant cases in which patients displayed the personality traits, memories and knowledge of their donors.

In one case, an eight-year-old female patient received a heart transplant from a murdered ten-year-old girl. As a result, the patient had to be taken to a psychiatrist - she began to have nightmares about the murder of her donor. She stated that she knew the killer. After several sessions, the psychiatrist decided to tell the police about it. It turned out that the testimony of the patient corresponded to reality, thanks to them the culprit was found. The charge was based on data first reported by the patient: the time, the weapon of the crime, the location, his dress, the words and behavior of the victim. It turned out that everything was so.

In another case, the heart of an eight-year-old Jewish boy who died in a car accident was transplanted into a three-year-old Arab girl with dangerous heart disease. As soon as the girl regained consciousness after the operation, she asked to bring her a special kind of candy - a traditional Jewish dish she knew nothing about before.

All these examples seem to confirm that the heart is a complex and mysterious organ, and not just a muscle pumping blood.

In the history of mankind, the heart has always been considered an important center of knowledge and feelings. Some of the earliest civilizations known to us, including Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, and Babylon, considered the heart to be the seat of intelligence. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that the heart is the most important organ of the body and all nerves begin in it. Interestingly, according to his observations, this is the first organ that forms in a chick embryo. Aristotle believed that this is the center of intelligence, movement and sensation - the center of the life force of the body.

Source: NLP-2: Next Generation - Robert Dilts

 

[Tomcat]

Emotional brain map: why we are ashamed of our temples, but we are afraid of tonsils​

Where do feelings come from in a person? It is known that our brain is responsible for them - but in which areas of it are these or those emotions born? We deal with the "emotional brain map" in order to understand how we feel, why anger is similar to happiness and why a person cannot live without gentle touches.

Guilt and Shame: Temporal Lobes​

It is easy for us to understand how memory or counting can be processes in the brain. Feeling is not so smooth, however, partly because in speech we use phrases like “break your heart” to describe sadness or “blush” to describe shame. And yet, feelings are a phenomenon from the field of neurophysiology: a process that takes place in the tissues of the main organ of our nervous system. Today we can appreciate it in part thanks to neuroimaging technology.
As part of their research, Petra Michl and several of her colleagues at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich recently took a series of MRI scans. They sought to find areas of the brain that are responsible for our ability to feel guilty or ashamed. Scientists have found that shame and guilt seem to be neighbors in the "block," although each of these feelings has its own anatomical area.
Experts asked the participants to imagine that they felt guilt or shame, and in both cases, this activated the temporal lobes of the brain. At the same time, shame involved in them the anterior cingulate cortex, which monitors the external environment and informs a person about mistakes, and the parahippocampal gyrus, which is responsible for remembering scenes from the past. The guilt, in turn, "included" the lateral occipital-temporal gyrus and the middle temporal gyrus - the center of the vestibular analyzer. In addition, the anterior and middle frontal gyri began to work in ashamed people, and in those who felt guilty, the amygdala and insular lobe became more active. The last two areas of the brain are part of the limbic system, which regulates our basic fight-or-flight emotions, internal organs, blood pressure and other parameters.
Comparing MRI scans of the brains of people of different sexes, scientists found that in women only the temporal lobes were affected by guilt, while in men the frontal lobes, occipital lobes and tonsils began to work in parallel - some of the most ancient elements of the brain that are responsible for the feeling of fear, anger, panic and pleasure.

Fear and anger: the amygdala​

During intrauterine development of the embryo, the limbic system forms immediately after the trunk, which organizes reflexes and connects the brain to the spinal cord. Her job is the feelings and actions that are necessary for the survival of the species. The tonsils are an important element of the limbic system. These areas are located near the hypothalamus, inside the temporal lobes, and are activated when we see food, sexual partners, rivals, crying children, and so on. The various reactions of the body to fear are also their work: if at night in the park it seems to you that a stranger is following you, and your heart begins to pound, this is due to the activity of the tonsils. In the course of several independent studies carried out in various centers and universities, experts managed to find out
Anger is in many ways also a function of the amygdala. However, it is strikingly different from fear, sadness, and other negative emotions. Human anger is amazing in that it is similar to happiness: as joy and pleasure, it makes us move forward, while fear or grief forces us to distance ourselves. Like other emotions, anger, anger and rage cover a wide variety of parts of the brain: after all, in order to realize their impulse, this organ needs to assess the situation, turn to memory and experience, regulate the production of hormones in the body, and much more.

Tenderness and comfort: the somatosensory cortex​

In many cultures, sadness and shock are usually hidden: for example, in British English there is even an idiomatic expression "keep a stiff upper lip", which means "not to betray your feelings." Nevertheless, neuroscientists argue that from the point of view of the physiology of the brain, a person simply needs the participation of other people. "Clinical experiments show that loneliness provokes stress more than any other factor," says German scientist and author of the book "Science of Happiness" Stefan Klein. “Loneliness is a burden on the brain and body. It results in anxiety, confusion in thoughts and feelings (a consequence of the work of stress hormones) and a weakened immune system. In isolation, people become sad and sick. "
Study after study shows that companionship is beneficial for a person physically and spiritually. It prolongs life and improves its quality. “One touch of someone who is close to you and deserves your trust relieves sadness,” says Stefan. "This is a consequence of the neurotransmitters - oxytocin and opioids - that are released in moments of tenderness."
Recently, British researchers were able to confirm the theory of the usefulness of weasel using computed tomography. They found that touching other people causes strong bursts of activity in the somatosensory cortex, which already works constantly, tracking all our tactile sensations. Scientists have come to the conclusion that the impulses that arise if someone gently touches our body in difficult times are associated with the process of isolating critical stimuli from the general stream that can change everything for us. Experts also noticed that the participants in the experiment experienced grief more easily when a stranger was holding their hand, and much easier when a loved one touched their palm.

Joy and laughter: the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus​

When we experience joy, experience happiness, laugh or smile, many different areas are “ignited” in our brain. The amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the anterior insular lobe of the large brain are involved in the creation and processing of positive emotions, so that feelings of joy, like anger, sadness, or fear, permeate the entire brain.
In joyful moments, the right amygdala becomes much more active than the left. Today it is widely believed that the left hemisphere of our brain is responsible for logic, and the right one for creativity. Recently, however, we know that this is not the case. For most functions, the brain requires both parts, although hemispheric asymmetry exists: for example, the largest speech centers are located on the left, while the processing of intonation and accents is more localized on the right.
The prefrontal cortex is the several areas of the frontal lobes of the brain that are located in the front of the hemispheres, just behind the frontal bone. They are linked to the limbic system and are responsible for our ability to set goals, make plans, achieve results, change course, and improvise. Research shows that in women's happy moments, the prefrontal cortex of the left hemisphere is more active than the same area on the right.
The hippocampus, which are located deep in the temporal lobes, together with the tonsils, help us separate important emotional events from insignificant ones, so that the former can be stored in long-term memory, and the latter can be thrown out. In other words, the hippocampus rate happy events in terms of their relevance to the archive. The cortex of the anterior insular lobe of the large brain helps them do this. It is also associated with the limbic system and is most active when a person recalls pleasant or sad events.

Lust and love: not emotions​

Today, the human brain is being studied by thousands of neuroscientists around the world. Nevertheless, science has not yet succeeded in determining exactly what emotion and feeling are. We know that many feelings are born in the limbic system, one of the most ancient elements of the brain. However, perhaps not everything that we have traditionally recognized as emotions is really emotion. For example, lust is not like fear or joy from the point of view of brain physiology. Its impulses are formed not in the tonsils, but in the ventral striatum, which is also called the "reward center". This area is also activated during orgasm or when eating delicious food. Some scholars even doubt that lust is a feeling.
In this case, lust is different from love, which activates the dorsal striatum. It is curious that the brain uses the same zone if a person uses drugs and becomes addicted to them. However, we definitely experience happiness, fear, anger, and sadness more often during periods of falling in love than during quiet periods, which means that love may be considered the sum of emotions, desires, and impulses.