Heart function: Ancients instinctively understood what neurocardiology is confirming now

The role of the heart in human society and culture has taken many curious turns. (Photo by Oleksandr P via Pexels)

For many, the heart is nothing more than a blood pump directed by the brain. But for others, the heart is the repository of love, emotions, and memories.

Trace the evolution of our understanding of the heart, and it's impossible to miss the significance of the heart in art, culture, religion, and science from prehistoric times, through ancient societies, the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, into modern times.

How the heart really works is just as interesting as its many meanings in our emotional and daily lives, and what cutting edge science is teaching us about this remarkable organ.

Ancient humans understood that a beating heart meant life, beating harder and faster with fear and love, and beating no more upon death. As a dead body quickly cooled, surely the heart must act as a furnace to warm the body. The heart had to be the home of emotions in our body, given its responses to love and joy, anger and fear. This hot beating organ in the middle of our body must be the location of consciousness, memory, and our soul. Surely the way to connect with God was through one’s heart.

The role of the heart in human society and culture has taken many curious turns. For millennia, the heart was revered as the king of the organs and home of the soul. But by the European Renaissance the heart lost its mystique, becoming nothing more than a blood pump. Curiously, about the same time, the symbolic heart took on the role of representing romantic love and the love of God. Soon the heart symbol went viral in art and literature.

We now physically dismiss the heart as a circulatory pump, devoid of feelings, memory, or our Self. Yet, we metaphorically continue to use it for those very things. When seeing someone you love dearly, why do you cross your hands over your heart? Where do you point to on your body when you say “me”? Certainly not at your head. Why do so many people still believe that our love of family and God reside in our hearts? We act as if our emotions and feelings our seated in our heart. But when asked what the heart’s purpose in our body is, we say it’s just a blood pump.

What is remarkable is the pervasiveness of the heart throughout society, both ancient and modern. Our ancestors believed the heart to be the most important organ in the body, home to emotions, reasoning, and memory. Their stories tell of the heart as the repository of the soul and the only way to connect with God.

Today we use heart emojis on texts and emails, we press a heart symbol if we like an Instagram or Twitter post, we look for the heart-healthy options on the menu, and we check to see the number of lives, indicated by the number of hearts left, when playing video games. We give heartfelt thanks, memorize lines by heart, and give our heart up to God. The heart is pervasive in our music, literature, and art. We now believe the heart to be nothing more than a blood pump, yet symbolically it is everywhere in our daily lives.

A new area of research called neurocardiology is finding that there is an ongoing dynamic, two-way dialogue between the heart and the brain. The heart has its own nervous system composed of over 40,000 neurons. It’s like it has its own little brain that enables the heart to sense, regulate, and remember. The heart is sending as many signals to the brain as the brain does to the heart. And the signals from the heart affect function in multiple parts of the brain including the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain.

Heart rhythms when regular and harmonious can positively affect the brain’s motivation, pain perception, and emotional centers. Abnormal rhythms can lead to anxiety and panic attacks. And we’re finding that the heart produces oxytocin, the love hormone, in similar amounts to the brain. So ancient views of the heart may hold more truth than we thought.

About 'Curious History of the Heart'

Columbia University Press/Bloomsbury India, 312 pages.

The Curious History of the Heart: A Cultural and Scientific Journey is a book about two histories. First, it is a journey across human history that traces the evolution of our understanding of the workings of the heart. What human exploration and experimentation led to our understanding of the remarkable and curious workings of the heart?

Second, the book tracks what the heart has meant to we humans culturally, religiously, and artistically, from the dawn of civilization to present. It’s about the curious obsession with the heart in the day-to-day lives of our ancestors and us today.”

There are sections in the book on how the heart really works, its many meetings in our emotional and daily lives, and what cutting-edge science is teaching us about this remarkable organ. The book concludes with recent advancements in heart therapies and what the future may hold for fixing and replacing broken hearts.