The Source of All Things

by Reinhard Friedl

  Does this consciousness originate solely in the brain? Fuchs is a proponent of embodiment. According to this theory, the whole body is the home of emotion and consciousness. For these to develop, a body and communication with the environment are required. Embodiment considers the whole person, not just the blood circulation in certain parts of the brain. The (whole) body acts as a medium of emotional perception through its resonance and mobility, and it is engaged in constant exchange with the environment.4

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  If you hit your foot on a doorstep, the pain is first felt in the toe. For you to be able to feel the pain inside you, you need to have a body with a heart, nerves, and brain. Thus, pain does not originate in your brain, but your brain knows where it hurts. You can switch off such pain with a general anesthetic. You can also apply a local anesthetic to the toe or interrupt the transmission of pain at the spinal cord. Or repair the doorstep before your foot hits it again.

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  The brain cannot feel pain; it does not have any pain receptors. A headache is not proof of the brain’s sensitivity to pain; rather, it is an irritation of the brain’s “wrapping,” meaning its lining, which is equipped with pain receptors. The brain has to rely on our sensory organs to supply it with information about the everyday world. Some of these organs are very familiar to us and their signals immediately become conscious experience: hands, skin, eyes, ears, nose, and sense of taste.

  But we also have inner sensors, as for example we feel when we need to go to the toilet or need to eat when our blood sugar drops. Fuchs believes that “the brain itself thinks nothing … It is always the whole person who perceives, ponders, decides something, remembers, and so on, not a neuron or a cluster of molecules.”5

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  The initiators of the Human Brain Project see this differently. They argue that the brain governs our body and that conscious perception originates exclusively in the brain. In 2013 they began a project to build a model of the human brain in the shape of a supercomputer; it was funded to the tune of 1.2 billion euros. In 2015 the first results were rather disappointing: with the phrase “Thick skulls, false promises,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper addressed the project’s lack of progress. Andreas Herz, Professor of Theoretical Neuroscience, even called it a “sham.” IT algorithms could not, he said, be used to recreate properties of the actual organ; a “one-to-one simulation of the brain is definitely not possible.”6

  * * *

  Traditional neuroscience views the brain as a kind of bio-computer and undoubtedly has been successful in examining its components. If a certain component falls ill or is destroyed, the affected person’s behavior or sensations change.

  It is similar to changing a specific processor or destroying the motherboard in a computer or TV—the images change, the screen goes dark, the information processing no longer functions properly. That is undisputed. But you cannot conclude from this that the information is created there. These electronic components, as well as the components of our brain, are necessary links in a chain that helps create the image. The information, the code for the content of the image or the processing power, is located in the software. And if we go even further back, the information comes from the brain of the software’s programmer. And how does the information get into the software developer’s brain? Does it originate there? When we watch a movie, we know the actors are not sitting in the television set but were filmed; the film was then edited and now it is being broadcast. So to watch TV we need sender and receiver, coding and decoding, as well as a range of devices and components.

  * * *

  No one today is surprised by the fact that information “flies” through the air and even space via wireless networks and mobile phones. If you transfer this principle of wireless communication to human beings—using terms such as “transmission of thoughts,” “intuition,” “compassion,” and “belief”—we are halfway to esotericism and leave measurability, and thus scientific respectability, behind. There’s an old saying: if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t exist. But this already seemed dubious to astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington 100 years ago. With a wink, he declared that humankind had always been obsessed with measuring and defining everything in the quest for knowledge. He used the example of catching fish with a net. Scientists will decide that fish-catching is defined as an activity where a net is being used. But you might ask: what about the small fish who slip through the net? The scientifically correct answer is: what I can’t catch with my net is by definition not a fish.7

  Not everyone makes it quite so easy for themselves, but I absolutely see such tendencies in today’s world, which is highly fixated on measurability.

  Are emotions and thoughts one and the same in the brain? No one would say: I think myself fearful. I think myself desperate. I think love. We feel fear, despair, and love. It is an immediate physical experience if we feel queasy with anger, or if we have butterflies in our tummy or joy in our heart. “We experience ourselves and the world not inside the skull but as incarnated, corporeal beings,” says Thomas Fuchs.8 We experience them with our whole body. The lightshow in the brain is, in any case, no proof of increased nerve activity, but direct evidence of increased blood flow with all of its information, coming directly from the heart. From the heart!

  Where is our home?

  A study of one hundred and twelve students, forty-two of them female, asked participants if they felt their Self was located in their heart or in their brain. Surprisingly indifferent to the findings of neuroscience, 52 percent voted for the heart, versus 48 percent for the brain. Interestingly, this study found that where someone locates the Self influences their personality, emotions, decision-making, and performance. A “heart person” reacts, decides, and acts differently from a “head person.”9

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  Brain and heart have particular importance in the history of humankind. Plato viewed the brain as the seat of the soul and the source of reason. His pupil Aristotle, on the other hand, had reason and soul emigrate to the heart. He saw the heart as the place from which warmth, blood, and life originate; therefore it must also be the center of the soul and human reason. Over the next 2,000 years, this examination of the soul was extended with different concepts and ideas by famous personalities such as Saint Augustine, Leonardo da Vinci, and René Descartes: the soul migrated from the brain to the heart and back again. All hypotheses remained unproven.10

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  Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I don’t mean it lies in the throat, but rather that the soul is a union of heart and brain. Unfortunately we still know very little about the connections between the two organs. For centuries they have been played off against each other, depicted as opponents with different ambitions. We reflect this understanding when we believe our head advises us differently from our heart in decision-making. People think of themselves as “heart types” or “head types,” as being driven by their emotions or their intellect. Both are established within us. They remind me of secret lovers. Romeo and Juliet inside us, intimately connected. If one organ is sick, the other will often fall ill as well. Many patients, for example, become depressed after a stroke, and illnesses of the heart valves can cause strokes in the brain. If the blood flow from the heart is seriously disturbed, personality changes and even dementia can occur.11 Vice versa, permanent stress and resentment are sheer poison for the heart: its pumping function may decrease as a result. It is not merely a saying but a fact: we can be scared, or bored, to death. Overstimulation of the brain is transmitted to the heart and causes fatal arrhythmia.12 So if it becomes unavoidable, the Romeo and Juliet of our body join each other in death. They are inextricably linked in cardiac death and brain death.

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  We all know that our heart also hurts when we feel great sorrow. In extreme cases such as deeply felt disasters—say, the death of a family member or friend—the heart may tighten and cramp. People feel tremendous pain, as with a stroke. But it isn’t one. The cause is
in the brain, which uses nerve tracts to send more stress signals to the heart than it can handle. When screened, it will look constricted, like an octopus that has been caught in a pot. This is why the first people to describe a heart thus afflicted used the poetic term “takotsubo syndrome,” tako-tsubo being the Japanese word for a fishing pot used to trap octopus. It became known widely, and memorably, as the “broken heart syndrome.” The new disciplines of neurocardiology and cardiac psychology deal intensively with the relationship of heart and brain, also called the neurocardiac axis.13

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  As a heart surgeon, I was of course also interested in the question of where my colleagues from the field of brain surgery would locate the soul. They are, after all, doctors who have seen a brain and held it in their hands! Here, too, opinions are divided. For some, consciousness comes down to electrochemistry in the brain, and they cannot accept anything else. Well-known Harvard neurosurgeon Professor Edward R. Laws is one of those who think it possible that the body together with the heart is the seat of the soul. Others view the soul as immaterial, immortal, and impartible.14

  * * *

  Science still owes us a definition. The study mentioned at the start of this section inquired about the location of the “self”—and that is suspiciously close to the “soul.” But the study’s authors carefully avoided using the term “soul,” maybe because “the self” sounds more scientific. The term “soul” is overused in esotericism, religion, and philosophy. So academics in the natural sciences and humanities fill new skins with old wines: they use terms such as “the self” or “the psyche.” The word “mind” has recently been favored internationally, even though that term can refer to a multitude of things somewhere between reason, soul, brain, and spirit.15

  * * *

  In the study most participants located their “self” clearly and definitively, and could not imagine deciding differently. The idea that men are generally more “in the head” and women more “in the heart” was confirmed, but only just: of the 52 percent voting for the heart, 64 percent were women. “Brain types” described themselves as rational, logical, and unemotional in their dealings with others, whereas “heart types” found more friendly words for themselves: emotional and warm in interpersonal contact. The results remained largely similar 285 days later, so weren’t due to a momentary mood.

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  Where would you place yourself in this study? Whatever your answer, you should take care that your heart and your brain are well linked. One is not worth more than the other. Only their connection makes you a whole, indivisible human being.

  What heart and brain have to say to each other

  International research teams have only just begun to decode the secret messages and understand the full extent of the intimate relationship between the two organs. Messages are endlessly exchanged within us via physical pulse waves, our circulatory system, our autonomic nervous system, hormones, and neurotransmitters—and heart and brain influence each other even through their magnetic fields,16 as they speak the same language, which has a rhythm, a beat. In this rhythmic activity of biological signals, information and messages are encoded—just as they are in modern telecommunication. When we talk to someone, we not only send out word signals but also incorporate body language. We find people more convincing when their words and gestures appear harmonious. A recent study found that people who put their hand on their heart when speaking were considered more believable. And they themselves found it much harder to lie when doing so.17 Touch also plays a role in the connection between heart and brain. Not only does their language consist of biocodes, which we are still far from having decoded, but in a way the heart also embraces the brain—a phenomenon which is clearly visible.

  Pulse waves

  American neurosurgeon James R. Doty writes that when he opens a skull and looks inside, the whole brain pulses to the rhythm of the heart.18 No fewer than four arteries run from the heart into the brain and continue there. The heart’s pulse waves alter the shape of the elastic walls of the surrounding brain cells; this creates electric brainwaves which relay the messages from the heart. The young research field of biophysics demonstrates impressively how mechanical forces affect our cells and even our genes.19 In the heart’s pulsation, which is rocking and squeezing the brain mass, biophysical information is encoded that may influence our personality and emotions.20 But that’s not all. You may know that the brain swims in cerebral fluid. This is excellent packaging and protects the brain from injury. But it also gives it buoyant force, making it light. Otherwise the organ weighing 1.3 kilograms would lie rather heavily in our head. Floating like this, the brain weighs only fifty grams. For the fluid to remain as clear as a mountain stream, it is kept circulating by the pulse waves from the heart.21 It is the job of a craniosacral therapist to sense the fluid’s rhythmic pulsation and identify any blockages.

  Hormones

  A human being can only win a fight or solve a task if their heart and head act together. Sometimes it seems wise to run. Is this the sign of a cowardly heart? No, because especially if we run for our lives, we need a strong heart. And we need adrenaline—which comes not only from the adrenal glands but also directly from the heart. No matter if we fight or flee—adrenaline and its relative, noradrenaline, make us abruptly wide awake and increase the performance of not only the heart but also the brain.22 “Necessity is the mother of invention,” they say. Adrenaline and noradrenaline from brain and heart contribute to this. Some people yearn for this special kick, when our heart beats in our throat and our thoughts become fast as lightning. They call themselves adrenaline junkies and love danger. One person’s joy is another’s sorrow; they are as close to each other as heart and brain. They rejoice together and can both independently release dopamine (a happiness hormone) if the situation has been mastered, the fight won, the life saved, the stressful incident resolved, the adventure survived. And if life hits us between the eyes, dopamine will also help us to continue and get motivated again. Even though it may stumble during a crisis, our heart will not stop beating, and our thoughts will readjust after a while. Heart and brain go hand in hand, in good times and bad, and speak the same language of hormones and neurotransmitters.

  Electromagnetic fields

  The synchronized discharges of muscle and nerve cells generate dynamic electromagnetic fields. These have long been used in medicine and provide medical professionals with reliable indications about the state of heart and brain. The signals of an electrocardiogram (ECG) tell your doctor if there is, for example, a disturbance of the blood supply. Neurologists are more interested in the waves in the brain, which they analyze using electroencephalography (EEG). From this, they can tell if we are attentive, relaxedly dreaming, or if cramps are causing an epileptic fit. If the electromagnetic fields of heart and brain can communicate so much to us medical professionals, they must also tell each other all sorts of things. That, however, is their well-kept secret. These messages are complex and have not been even partially decoded. We do not know how heart and brain attract, repel, or influence each other via their magnetic fields. Experiments with cells allow us to conclude, however, that there would have to be a whole lot going on here in secret. Because when you release isolated cells in an artificially created electromagnetic field, this influences the permeability of the cell membranes and the cells’ ability to communicate with the environment. It also affects our genetic make-up and the cells’ ability to reproduce.23 This, in turn, can have to do with love …

  Nervous system

  The heart even has its own “small brain” with over forty thousand nerve cells. Or should I say the heart has its own head? Even though it is connected with every cell of the body, it can act quite autonomously and independently.24 The number of nerve cells is decidedly smaller than in the cerebrum or the gut. But as we can see with many a fellow human being, the sheer mass or the mere existence of brain cells has not necessarily anything to do with intelligence or how to employ it. To us
e a quote attributed to Albert Einstein: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts is countable.” The heart has a memory, and as far as we know today it acts in a time frame between milliseconds and minutes.25 It is the organ for the present, its task is to create life in every second. Its first interest is what is happening at the moment, what is indispensable to life, what needs to be done now.

  One thing, however, really astonished me. More nerve signals travel from heart to brain than the other way around—an unbelievable 80 percent come from the heart.26 The neuronal heart messages first arrive at the brain stem, the same as all other information which the autonomic nervous system has collected about our body and from the organs: via blood pressure, metabolic processes, body temperature, and—very importantly—breathing. The brain stem houses the center of our autonomic nervous system, whose name suggests that usually we cannot influence it. All inner body functions are permanently operated, adjusted, and regulated there, millisecond to millisecond. The sensory organ that is the heart sends its messages to the brain via nerve post with high accuracy, and the brain minutely and subtly sends its information to the heart.