Our Heart Is An Organ Of Truth & Emotion
In the film “Of Hearts and Minds,” science documentary filmmaker David Malone explores the human heart, juxtaposing the modern scientific view of it as a just a single stroke pump, Vs its long history as a symbol of Love and the center of wisdom and human character.
“I love you with all my heart,” and the reference to being “broken-hearted” or “cold hearted” such poetic language is based on reality.
This is the question Malone seeks to answer in this film, and the reason he thinks the answer may be important is because he believes the way we see our heart is a reflection of how we view ourselves as human beings.
The ancient Egyptians saw the heart as an organ of Truth. And indeed, our hearts do seem to be able to tell us the truth about how we feel and what we think is right or wrong. When we lie our heart rate tends to speed up.
In the film Mr. Malone scans the latest science, to find out whether feelings and emotions really come from our brains, or whether they may originate in our hearts.
Leonardo Da Vinci discovered how the blood flowed through the heart, and how the swirling vortexes within the heart’s chambers worked with the heart, opening and closing the valves with each heart beat, the heart is not simple single-stroke pump.
Da Vinci’s drawings and experiments reveal a harmonic beauty, “Art as a Machine.”
David Paterson, PhD, a professor at Oxford University, studies these 2 Key areas.
His work shows that your brain is not the sole source of your emotions, but the heart and brain work together when producing emotions.
Your heart actually contains neurons, similar to those in your brain, and your heart and brain are closely connected, creating a symbiotic emotional whole.
The film explains: When our heart receives signals from our brain via the sympathetic nerves, it pumps faster. And when it receives signals through the parasympathetic nerves, it slows down.
While this seems to support the view that the heart simply follows the orders of the brain, the reality is far more complex.
Because your heart also contains thousands of specialized neurons, predominantly located around the right ventricle surface, forming a complex network.
The Big : Why did nature put them there?
The Big A: Neurons are what allow our brain to form thoughts.
While much about the neurons is still unknown, one thing is sure, the brain in our heart communicates back and forth with the brain in our head.
In the film, Professor Paterson shows a piece of heart tissue from a rabbit, not the whole heart, just a piece of the right ventricle, where the neurons are clustered.
Kept in a tank with nutrients and a steady flow of oxygen, this suspended piece of heart tissue beats all by itself, even though it’s not attached to a living organism, and there’s no actual blood pumping through it.
By sending an electrical impulse into this tissue via an electrode, Professor Patterson demonstrates how the heart tissue immediately slows its contractions; a “decision” made by the neurons in the tissue in response to the stimulation.
This elegant little experiment shows that it is the neurons in our heart that decide how it behaves, not the neurons in your brain. What Professor Patterson is finding again shifts our view of it back toward its more poetic and philosophical origins.
David Malone says: “The heart is a pump that responds when the brain asks it to, but it is not enslaved to the brain. Its relationship to the brain is more like a marriage … with each dependent on the other. It seems science is now restoring to the heart something that rightfully belongs to it: Our emotions.”
The interplay between the 2 Key organs can be seen when looking at how our emotional and mental outlook colors our health.
Intense anger boosts our heart attack risk 5X, and our stroke risk 3X.
Intense grief after the loss of a loved one also raises our risk of having a heart attack. The day immediately following such a loss, the risk of a heart attack goes up by 21X, and remains 6X higher than normal for several weeks.
The research shows that people exposed to traumatic experiences, for example, combat veterans, New Orleans residents who went through Hurricane Katrina, and Greeks struggling through financial turmoil, have higher rates of cardiac problems than the general population.
In one such study, which involved over 200,000 veterans aged 46 to 74, 35% of those diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) developed insulin resistance in two years, compared to only 19% of those not diagnosed with PTSD.
PTSD sufferers also had higher rates of metabolic syndrome, a collection of risk factors that raise the risk of CHD, such as high body fat, cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels.
53% of US Veterans with PTSD had several of these symptoms, compared to 37% of those not suffering with PTSD.
If negative emotions have the potential to harm our heart, it stands to reason that positive emotions may heal it, and this seems to be the case.
In a study of 1,500 people with an increased risk of early-onset coronary artery disease, those who reported being cheerful, relaxed, satisfied with life, and full of energy had a 33% reduction in coronary events.
Those people with the highest risk of coronary events enjoyed an even greater risk reduction of nearly 50%. This was true even when other risk factors, such as smoking, age, and diabetes, were taken into account.
Separate research has found that: Positive psychological well-being is associated with a consistent reduced risk of CHD (coronary heart disease); Emotional vitality may protect against risk of CHD in men and women; Cheerful heart disease patients live longer than pessimistic heart patients; Very optimistic people have lower risks of dying from any cause, and lower risks of dying from CHD, compared to highly pessimistic people.
In one test, David Malone is shown a series of images of neutral and frightened faces, some synced in time to his heartbeat, and others not synced to his heart.
Interestingly, when the frightened faces were shown in sync with his heartbeat, he perceived them as being more intensely frightened than when shown out of sync with his heartbeat.
What this test showed was that how his mind processed the perception of fear was affected by his heart. When his brain processed the image there was a greater resonance in the emotional output.
By looking at the brain scans taken during the test, the researchers are able to pinpoint the precise brain region affected by the heart, the amygdala an area known to be associated with threat perception.
Our amygdala processes fear, this connection is also at work when you experience feelings of compassion and empathizing with other people’s emotional states.
It is our heart working with our brain that allows us to feel for others. That is what makes us human, as compassion it is its gift to the rational mind.
Listen, the Bell is Ringing, reach out, give your hand…
Paul Ebeling
HeffX-LTN
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