The Emblem of Love; the Heart or the Brain? – Bankole Ridwan (Bankrid)

How do love and the heart related? What should have been the best emblem of love? Hmm $64,000  question! The heart or the brain? If love is an emotion and the substrate of emotion is thought then, do we think with our heart or brain? Is it right to have chosen the heart as an emblem of love? For the heart to have been chosen, universally, as an emblem of love, it deserves a critical look. Read this piece for clarity. Though the heart is not the only emblem love.
Love is an emotion and emotion comes from the brain specifically the limbic system which comprises structures in the oldest parts of the brain that control things like affection, anger, attraction, love, mating etc. The brain is a complex organ in our body that is housed in the brain box (cranium). It’s a central organ which together with the spinal cord controls other viscera including the heart, the gastrointestinal tract (GIT), the liver, the kidney and many more. The emotion from the limbic system serves practical functions and not abstract. Emotion (fear) triggers different reaction in our body which prepare the body for either fight or fight in a dangerous situation and the changes in the body activities depend on the type of stimulation. The brain (the CPU of the body system) sends appropriate signal through neurological pathways (nerves) to the target organ. This signal may either be inhibitory or excitatory, the effect of the stimulation depend on the organ innervated and the situation. Sympathetically stimulation of the heart causes it to beat faster (preparing it to deliver more oxygen to the muscle due to increase in demand for energy), when GIT muscle is parasympathetically signalled, this increases bowel movement and also there are many more notable responses peculiar to each of the organs. When you feel love, the emotion originates in your brain but, like fear, signals body and changes its activities. For example, changing of the heart rhythm on sighting of the love one.
Most of the time, you become aware of the changes an emotion triggers before the prevalence of the emotion. For example, when you see a lion, before the prefrontal cortex (brain part that create awareness) sensitise you that this is a lion, your limbic system has decided that there is a threat and start preparing you for flight. If the reverse is the case, before you identify that this is a lion, it may be already too late for you to escape from this wild animal. Because it feels subjectively that emotion originates in the body, and because nearly all strong emotions cause a change in heartbeat, we say that the heart is the seat of emotion and wisdom, and that the brain exists only to cool the blood . That’s the origin of the notion that we feel with our hearts. With this, can heart be generalised as the emblem of all emotions?
In another view, the brain is made up of living cells known as the neurons. Millions of these are present and are interconnected to form the brain. As we were taught in biology, characteristics of living things include: nutrition, respiration, excretion etc. All these interconnected neurons, for them to remain as living cells, these aforementioned essential characteristics of living things performed by the brain depend on the activities of the heart. The inhaled oxygen is mixed with the blood and sent to different organ in the body that needs oxygen including the brain. The oxygen in the blood oxidises the glucose and provides energy for those cells to carry out their metabolic functions. The outcome of metabolism is the release of waste product which is injurious to the cells themselves and must be got rid of. The blood through the pumping action of the heart transports the waste product to the respective organ of excretion. In the other hand, the beating of the heart is controlled by the brain through its vagus nerves. Can we say heart cannot beat when it receives no signal from the brain? I If true, then the heart can be taken as the most important body organ. Actually not, heart is capable of generating its pulse from the sinoatrial node (SA node). With this one can say without the heart the brain cannot function (the brain cells will die of starvation) and not vice versa. It can be concluded that the heart is the most important organ in the body. No wonder the doctors check for the heart beat before a patient is declared dead. The heart as an emblem of love being offer to you depict how important you are in your partner’s life. Don’t break your partiner’s heart as s(he) cannot survive without it. Also, look before you leap, don’t offer your heart to a wrong person. It is dangerous.