The Heart
For Aristotle, the heart was the seat of the soul. No wonder, because – unlike the brain – the heart reacts noticeably to intense emotions. And so it not only beats in our throats, it can also be made of stone, be pure or given away, but it can also break, and of course we should listen to it. Although the brain plays the main role in all these processes, try replacing the terms – it doesn't feel right.
On the other hand, the heart plays an important role for the brain. Not only does its immediate health depend on it: the better the heart, the better the brain. Please understand this as an invitation to take up endurance sports! Stress also has a direct impact on the brain. The best-known disease is probably broken heart syndrome, but there are several others. Even at the cellular level, there are striking parallels, which is why the new field of neurocardiology views the heart and brain as a system – and is being studied at all levels at the Multiscale Bioimaging Center of Excellence in Göttingen, for example.
In this topic, we take a look over the shoulders of neurocardiologists – you can find a good overview in the article ▸ More than just a pump by Nora Schultz.
emotions
Neuroscientists understand "emotions" to be complex response patterns that include experiential, physiological, and behavioral components. They arise in response to personally relevant or significant events and generate a willingness to act, through which the individual attempts to deal with the situation. Emotions typically occur with subjective experience (feeling), but differ from pure feeling in that they involve conscious or implicit engagement with the environment. Emotions arise in the limbic system, among other places, which is a phylogenetically ancient part of the brain. Psychologist Paul Ekman has defined six cross-cultural basic emotions that are reflected in characteristic facial expressions: joy, anger, fear, surprise, sadness, and disgust.