Re: Does the heart think?

That's a new one on me. I made a point of hitting Pubmed and even Wikipedia to see if I was missing something.

A cursory Google search turned up some "new age" links which echoed her argument. However, I'm gonna stick with my, albeit rusty, basic physiology.

The heart has the ability to generate rhythmic action potentials. This is how the heart keeps itself beating on schedule. It also has the ability to respond to neuronal inputs such as the vagus nerve, which tells it to "speed up" or "slow down!" However, the heart does not do any information storage or local processing.

http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/StudentJournal/volume2/kate.pdf is one student's attempt to take a crack at this. She points out a few mechanisms by which this "cellular memory" is consistent with existing science. One is the possibility that the recipient is reacting to stray bits of info picked up about the donor. Another is that the heart has its own set of chemical signals and responses, and those get added to the recipient's own mix.

I would just like to add that there don't seem to be many examples of cannibals learning anything.