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William Harvey 1578-1657 |
Often our ‘gut instinct’ is to take a particular course of
action but our ‘rational mind says no’, and often in hindsight we wish we had
followed our ‘gut instinct’. The heart
figures prominently in our cultural expression of emotions. It is in our poetry
and our literature. But is there a physiological explanation for this? Can the
heart once again be centre-stage of our feelings? Do we really have ‘gut’
instincts? In a three-part series of videos by Voices from Oxford, Professor David Paterson, Associate
Head of Medical Sciences at Oxford University, explores with Denis Noble a
paradigm shift in the way we think about our heart and brain and the intimate
neural connections between the two.
Appropriately the
filming is at Merton College where, as a result of the 17th Century
English Civil War, William Harvey was briefly Warden. Harvey revolutionised our
understanding of how the body works by describing the role of the heart as a
pump, a mechanical device for circulating the blood round the body. His seminal
work contributed over centuries to a “decoupling” of brain and heart, and of
the heart from our concept of mind. But
as David Paterson explains the heart is “physically hard-wired by the nervous
system”. It has a nervous network involved in its excitability. The heart and brain are not “isolated
islands”.
This article also appeared on Voices from Oxford
In the footsteps of William Harvey
Ray Noble is News Editor of Voices from Oxford
Follow @Ray_Noble1
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