Re: ABR article: "the heart does think"

Apart from the physiological and chemical interactions, I suspect the psychology of having a "natural" organ replaced by an experimental artificial replacement would be rather difficult. It would, I would think, at the vary least bring into the forefront of consciousness the uncertainty of life, or even the next moment. We all, of course, live with this uncertainty,
but it seems like most of us push it aside. The folks with the artifical devices could not.

Peter Cook
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Jim Armstrong
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 2:12 PM
  Subject: Re: ABR article: "the heart does think"

  ...And there are a lot of different chemical interactions, of which adrenalin is just one instance. JimA

  Dawsonzhu@aol.com wrote:
Is there any scientific basis for the physiological claim below?

    
Well the claim of the article is probably pushing it.

All the same, if you think about it a little,
if you were to cut out the heart and put something artificial
there, it's reasonable to expect that there would be enormous
physiological changes in the body. The heart is a fundamental
organ in the body and there must be many feedback loops that are
built in to respond to stimulii: lack of oxygen, too much oxygen,
anger, exercise, etc. Cut out a major component that exchanges
messages between the brain and the heart in that loop, and
who knows what could happen.
Received on Wed May 18 21:38:42 2005