Head or Heart or Twins

5000 years of recorded history have remained divided between the heart and the brain: which is the center of intelligence?

Look in thy heart, and write,’ Sir Philip Sidney’s muse commanded him, chiding him for a ‘Fool’ for not thinking of doing this in the first place – and ‘heart’ in Sidney’s time was pretty much synonymous with ‘mind’ in this sense.

Later we have Wordsworth-

My heart leaps up when I behold 

   A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began; 

So is it now I am a man; 

So be it when I shall grow old, 

   Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

Throughout much of recorded history, human beings have understood that intelligence, the ability to learn, understand, reason and apply knowledge to shape their environment, was a function of the brain in the head.

There also is ample evidence in the writings and oral traditions societies passed down through the generations that they strongly believed in an intelligent heart.

Cardiocentrism was first derived from the Egyptian belief that heart was the house of thought and soul. This idea was later accepted by Aristotle who found that certain primitive animals could move and feel without the brain, and so deduced that the brain was not responsible for movement or feeling. Apart from that, he pointed out that the brain was at the top of the body, far from the centre of the body, and felt cold.

However, Pythagoras held an opposing theory called "cephalocentrism", which proposed that that the brain played the dominant role in controlling the body. Plato, Hippocrates and Galen held this view.

After English physician William Harvey wrote his On the Circulation of the Blood (1628) a viable alternative to Galenic physiology became widely accepted.

Harvey supported the Aristotelian notion of the heart.  He wrote in 1653:  "The heart is situated at the 4th and 5th ribs. Therefore [it is] the principal part because [it is in] the principal place, as in the center of a circle, the middle of the necessary body."  He examined carefully the function of all of its different parts and came to a reverse conclusion of Galen and his medieval and Renaissance readers:  he believed that the heart was actively at work when it was small, hard and contracted (systole), expelling blood, and at rest when it was large and filled with blood (diastole).  In 1628, he wrote:  "[T]he heart's one role is the transmission of the blood and its propulsion,, by means of the arteries, to the extremities everywhere."  Harvey firmly dismissed the idea of a porous septum. 

Yet he did not challenge the metaphysical intepretation of the heart.  The heart, as Master Nicolaus had aptly observed in the late twelfth century, was the primary "spiritual member" of the body.  As such, it was the seat of all emotions.  "If indeed from the heart alone rise anger or passion, fear, terror, and sadness; if from it alone spring shame, delight, and joy, why should I say more?" wrote Andreas de Laguna in 1535.  Harvey metaphorically described the heart as the "king" or "sun" of the body to underscores its cosmological importance.

https://www.heartmath.org/articles-of-the-heart/the-math-of-heartmath/heart-intelligence/

Research into the idea of heart intelligence began accelerating in the second half of the 20th century. During the 1960s and ’70s pioneer physiologists John and Beatrice Lacey conducted research that showed the heart actually communicates with the brain in ways that greatly affect how we perceive and react to the world around us. In 1991, the year the HeartMath Institute was established, pioneer neurocardiologist Dr. J. Andrew Armour introduced the term “heart brain.” He said the heart possessed a complex and intrinsic nervous system that is a brain.

Today, more than a half century after the Laceys began their research, we know a great deal more about the heart:

• The heart sends us emotional and intuitive signals to help govern our lives.

• The heart directs and aligns many systems in the body so that they can function in harmony with one another.

• The heart is in constant communication with the brain. The heart’s intrinsic brain and nervous system relay information back to the brain in the cranium, creating a two-way communication system between heart and brain.

• The heart makes many of its own decisions.

• The heart starts beating in the unborn fetus before the brain has been formed, a process scientists call autorhythmic.

• Humans form an emotional brain long before a rational one, and a beating heart before either.

• The heart has its own independent complex nervous system known as “the brain in the heart.”

https://owlcation.com/stem/your-second-brain-is-in-your-heart

Amazing new discoveries have revealed that the heart organ is intelligent. Sometimes our heart can lead the brain both in our interpretation of the external world as well as the actions we choose to take. A large number of case studies was enough to prompt scientists to examine the heart with a different lens. They began by testing old theories that claim that the heart is involved in our feelings, emotions, and premonitions.
Since cardiac surgeon, Christian Barnard's first successful human heart transplant in South Africa in 1967, heart transplant recipients have had some intriguing experiences. Some of these events were so strange that recipients sought to meet the families of their donors to find out what was happening to them.
The question was: Could the patients have inherited certain behavioral and character traits through cellular memories from the heart of their donors? The following anecdotes are only a few of the many cases reported as evidence of something extraordinary happening to heart transplant recipients:

• A gentle, soft-spoken woman who never drank alcohol and hated football received a heart from a crashed biker donor and turned into an aggressive, beer-drinking football fan.

• A 47-year-old Caucasian male received a heart from a 17-year-old African American male. The recipient was surprised by his newfound love of classical music. What he discovered later was that the donor, who loved classical music and played the violin, had died in a drive-by shooting, clutching his violin case to his chest. A man who could barely write suddenly developed a talent for poetry.

• An eight-year-old girl who received the heart of a ten-year-old murdered girl had horrifying nightmares of a man murdering her donor. The dreams were so traumatic that psychiatric help was sought. The girl’s images were so specific that the psychiatrist and the mother notified the police. Using the most detailed and horrid descriptive memories provided by the little girl, the police gathered enough evidence to find the murderer, charge him, and get a conviction for rape and first-degree murder.

https://ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity