Heartbreak Science (ATOM Study Guide)

Since ancient times, the heart was seen as the source of the emotions while the brain was the rational organ. Even Aristotle regarded the heart as the seat of the soul or spirit. Today our language still reflects this as we continue to regard the heart as the centre of love and use expressions like, 'Have a heart!', to encourage compassion or call someone 'heartless' if they are cruel.

After all, when we are in an emotional state, the heart beats faster and respiration increases so it's easy to assume that emotions are somehow connected with the chest rather than the head. The more common scientific view is that it is merely a pump; especially since heart transplants became more commonplace. But some cling to the view that the heart is more than a simple organ with just one purpose.

It's easy to dismiss this idea as sentimental nonsense but this view has been encouraged since the discovery of the Intrinsic Cardiac Ganglia. This brain-like collection of cells in the heart may be only a regulation mechanism but it is tempting to think that they do much more than that – that they are the heart's own 'Small Brain'.

In Heartbreak Science, both sides of the complex argument are examined. Some rather extreme attitudes among US academics and an English transplant patient are put up against the conventional views of a transplant surgeon and the dour Scottish medical system where the Chief Medical Officer is looking for an answer to the epidemic of heart disease in that deep-fried nation.

While the medical establishment is extremely sceptical about the idea of a heart that can think for itself, it is concerned that present ideas of heart disease being linked to poor diet are wrong or at best, only part of the problem. Meanwhile, we meet a heart transplant patient who is convinced that he has inherited aspects of his donor's personality, including the tendency to write (extremely bad) poetry. And a woman who is convinced with some reason that her father died of a broken heart.

There is at least hard evidence for a broken heart – here we see how an American physician has discovered that people in extreme emotional stress do have a differently shaped heart – a hypersensitivity to adrenaline in some people alters the heart physically in the short term and can lead to a failure. There is also discussion of the fight or flight syndrome, the effects that constant unresolved stress can have on this vital organ.

Heartbreak Science is a fascinating exploration of a new area of medical science and of the differing responses to new knowledge. On the one hand we have somewhat overenthusiastic thinkers who seem to have quite peculiar ideas – which then are found to have some merit. On the other is a slow moving and resistant establishment, which surprisingly accepts some quite novel ideas as possible explanations for a serious social problem.