Biology of the Heart
Last updated
Last updated
The heart communicates with the brain and body in four ways:
Neurological communication (nervous system)
Biochemical communication (hormones)
Biophysical communication (pulse wave)
Energetic communication (electromagnetic fields)
In addition to its extensive neurological interactions, the heart also communicates with the brain and body biochemically by way of the hormones it produces. Although not typically thought of as an endocrine gland, the heart actually manufactures and secretes a number of hormones and neurotransmitters that have a wide-ranging impact on the body as a whole.
The heart was reclassified as part of the hormonal system in 1983, when a new hormone produced and secreted by the atria of the heart was discovered. It was later discovered the heart contains cells that synthesize and release catecholamines (norepinephrine, epinephrine and dopamine), which are neurotransmitters once thought to be produced only by neurons in the brain and ganglia.[23]
More recently, it was discovered the heart also manufactures and secretes oxytocin, which can act as a neurotransmitter and commonly is referred to as the love or socialbonding hormone. Remarkably, concentrations of oxytocin produced in the heart are in the same range as those produced in the brain.
In 1995, the HeartMath Institute published a study in the American Journal of Cardiology documenting the influence of positive or negative thinking on the heart. In the study, 12 people were asked to think ‘appreciation’ and 12 people people were asked to think ‘anger’. The scientists were monitoring the subject’s hearts (what tech).
What scientists found was that the heart rate of the group thinking ‘appreciation’ was beating smoothing as a rhythmic rate. It was in harmony. The heart rate of the group thinking ‘anger’ was impaired. This measurement is called ‘internal coherence’. The internal coherence in the heart helps put your other organs into similar state of coherence. In a sense, positive thinking can cause your body to be in balance and in harmony.
In 2006, researchers at the University of Utah studied 150 married couples. They found that when women and men were more hostile and mean towards their partners, they displayed a greater amount of hardening in their arteries. [page 6, its the thought that counts]
HeartMath researches found that ‘care and compassion’ produced a stronger immune system than ‘anger and frustration’. They measured s-IgA - which found in human saliva and is responsible for neutralizing bacteria in your mouth. High amounts indicate a strong immune system and vice versa.
🙏“Coherence is the state when the heart, mind and emotions are in energetic alignment and cooperation. It is a state that builds resiliency – personal energy is accumulated, not wasted – leaving more energy to manifest intentions and harmonious outcomes.” - HeartMath Institute Research Director Dr. Rollin McCraty
"One of the things we identified in our research was the state we now call coherence and what we found was that when we're feeling positive emotions like we're really appreciating the sunset or really feeling love or compassion or care for someone that the heart beats out a very different message the heart generates by far the largest rhythmic electromagnetic field produced in the body and what we've now found is that if we look at the spectrum analysis of the magnetic field we needed by the heart that the emotional information is actually encoded and modulating into those fields so by learning to shift our emotions that's changing the information we're encoding into the magnetic fields radiated by the heart and that can impact those around us we are fundamentally and deeply interconnected with each other and the planet itself and what we do individually really does count in matters"
The Global Coherence Initiative (GCI) explores the interconnectivity of humanity with Earth’s magnetic fields.
It is postulated that as increasing numbers of people add coherent energy to the global field, it helps strengthen and stabilize mutually beneficial feedback loops between human beings and Earth’s magnetic fields.
We are coming to understand health not as the absence of disease, but rather as the process by which individuals maintain their sense of coherence (i.e. sense that life is comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful) and ability to function in the face of changes in themselves and their relationships with their environment. [57]
Because the heart plays a central role in creating physiological coherence and is associated with heartfelt positive emotions and intuition, it is not surprising that one of the strongest threads uniting the views of diverse cultures and religious and spiritual traditions throughout history has been a universal regard that it is the source of love, wisdom, intuition, courage, etc. Everyone is familiar with such expressions as “put your heart into it,” “learn it by heart” and “speak from your heart.” All of these suggest an implicit knowledge that the heart is more than a physical pump that sustains life. Such expressions reflect what often is called the intuitive, or spiritual heart. Throughout history, people have turned to the intuitive heart – also referred to as their inner voice, soul or higher power – as a source of wisdom and guidance
We suggest that the terms intuitive heart and spiritual heart refer to our energetic heart, which we believe is coupled with a deeper part of ourselves. Many refer to this as their higher self or higher capacities, or what physicist David Bohm described as “our implicate order and undivided wholeness.”
We use the term energetic systems in this context to refer to the functions we cannot directly measure, touch or see, such as our emotions, thoughts and intuitions. Although these functions have loose correlations with biological activity patterns, they nevertheless remain covert and hidden from direct observation. Several notable scientists have proposed that such functions operate primarily in the frequency domain outside of time and space and they have suggested some of the possible mechanisms that govern how they are able to interact with biological processes
Magnetic fields produced by the heart are involved in energetic communication, which we also refer to as cardioelectromagnetic communication. The heart is the most powerful source of electromagnetic energy in the human body, producing the largest rhythmic electromagnetic field of any of the body’s organs. The heart’s electrical field is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the electrical activity generated by the brain.
This field, measured in the form of an electrocardiogram (ECG), can be detected anywhere on the surface of the body. Furthermore, the magnetic field produced by the heart is more than 100 times greater in strength than the field generated by the brain and can be detected up to 3 feet away from the body, in all directions, using SQUID-based magnetometers (Figure 6.1).
An important step in testing our hypothesis that the heart’s electromagnetic field could transmit signals between people was to determine if an individual’s field and the information modulated within it could be detected by others.
Can the electromagnetic field generated by the heart of one individual be detected in physiologically relevant ways in another person, and if so, does it have any discernible biological effects? To investigate these possibilities, we used signal-averaging techniques to detect signals that were synchronous with the peak of the R-wave of one subject’s ECG in recordings of another subject’s electroencephalogram (EEG) or brain waves.
From an electrophysiological perspective, it appears that sensitivity to this form of energetic communication between individuals is related to the ability to be emotionally and physiologically coherent. The data indicate that when individuals are in the coherent state, they are more sensitive to receiving information contained in the magnetic fields generated by others. In addition, during physiological coherence, internal systems are more stable, function more efficiently and radiate electromagnetic fields containing a more coherent structure.
Prominent medical experts have recently discovered that many recipients of heart transplants inherit donors' memories and subsequently report huge changes in their tastes, their personality, and, most extraordinarily, in their emotional memories. Today, scientists are testing the theory that the heart and the gut are involved in our feelings. So, what have they discovered?
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.
Science has attempted to explain why organ recipients are hosts to donors’ memories and emotions, also known as "cellular memories." While a handful of scientists are skeptical and dismissing this strange phenomenon as post-surgery stress or reaction to anti-organ rejection drugs, there are also a growing number of experts who believe cellular memories are indeed transplanted from donor to recipient with organs.
Dr. Paul Pearsall, for instance, believes in the possibility of cellular memories being transferred to new owners by way of transplant procedures, due in part to his own bone marrow transplant in 1987. He analyzes this phenomenon and its larger implications for how we conceive of human consciousness in his book The Heart's Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy.
Dr. Armour dubbed this discovery as the "little brain in the heart." Memory is a distributive process which means you can’t localize it to a neuron or a group of neurons in the brain. The memory itself is distributed throughout the neural system. So, why do we draw a line at the brain? Maybe it's time we distinguish the functions of the brain and what we call the mind.
In addition, the heart communicates with the brain in many methods: neurologically, biochemically, biophysically, and energetically. The vagus nerve, which is 80% afferent, carries information from the heart and other internal organs to the brain. Signals from the "heart brain" redirect to the medulla, hypothalamus, thalamus, and amygdala and the cerebral cortex.
Thus, the heart sends more signals to the brain than vice versa. Research has demonstrated that pain perception is modulated by neural pathways and methods targeting the heart such as vagus nerve stimulation and heart-rhythm coherence feedback techniques.
The heart is not just a pump. It has its neural network or "little brain." The methods targeting the heart modulate pain regions in the brain. These methods seem to modulate the key changes that occur in the brain regions and are involved in the cognitive and emotional factors of pain. Thus, the heart is probably a key moderator of pain.
Research from the Institute of HeartMath shows that this emotional information is encoded in this energetic field. HeartMath researchers have also seen that as we consciously focus on feeling a positive emotion - such as care, appreciation, compassion or love - it has a beneficial effect on our own health and well-being, and can have a positive affect on those around us.
In 1991, Dr. Andrew Armour of the UCLA Neurocardiology Research Center discovered a sophisticated collection of neurons in the heart that organized into a small, complex nervous system. The heart’s nervous system contains around 40,000 neurons called sensory neurites that communicate with the brain.
