• Question: Do you think our hearts can keep memories or remember anything?

    Asked by dizzyg12 to Susan, Simon, Rachel, Lou on 13 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Simon Langley-Evans

      Simon Langley-Evans answered on 13 Nov 2013:


      Dizzy

      That’s a lovely idea and I think I see where you are coming from on this. We like to say that affection and love and happy memories stay in our heart, but that is just an expression. The heart cannot store memories and is basically just a special kind of muscle. It has the job of pumping blood around the body and doesn’t do anything else at all.

      Memories are kept in the brain and nowhere else. Scientists don’t completely know how it works yet, but think that for something to be remembered brain cells need to make new connections with other brain cells. There is a technique called MRI scanning which allows scientists to watch the brain working whole people are doing different tasks, so they can actually see which parts of the brain come into action when people try to memorise things and when they try to call those memories back. We can also see that people lose memories when their brains are injured or when they become very old. Sometimes people lose their memory completely, which is called amnesia. This usually follows a head injury, which gives us more evidence that the brain holds our memories.

      So sadly the heart is just a pump, but some really happy memories make your heart beat a little bit faster, or miss a beat. Thats because the happy memory excites us.

    • Photo: Rachel Dakin

      Rachel Dakin answered on 13 Nov 2013:


      Unfortunately our heart can’t keep memories like our brains, the heart is just a large and specialised pump. I think the phrases like ‘heartache’ and ‘love with all my heart’ are quite old. A long time ago people knew little about the brain and thought that the heart was the main organ in control of the body. They realised that when people felt happy, or in love, their hearts beat faster and that’s where the phrases come from.

      The cells in the heart, and all the body, do have a ‘cellular memory’ though. This memory is very important to make sure a cell can keep working properly – making the same amount of different proteins. Lots of molecules attach to the DNA in the cell and tell it which genes to make and which not to make. When a cell divides and makes an identical daughter cell these molecules are lost. However they are replaced by mechanisms which require a cellular memory – the memory of which molecules were where on the DNA. If the cell didn’t have this ‘memory’ then a heart cell that has just divided might not act as a heart cell anymore.
      So our heart can’t keep memories but the cells have special ones.

    • Photo: Susan Skelton

      Susan Skelton answered on 14 Nov 2013:


      This is a really interesting question as we still don’t know yet exactly how the brain works and how memories are made. It is definitely known, though, that memories are made and stored in the brain.

      Some people used to think that memories could be stored in major organs such as the heart, and when someone has a transplant, the patient receives new memories along with the new organ. However, there is no proof that this can happen and scientists believe that memories are only stored in the brain.

    • Photo: Louise Brown

      Louise Brown answered on 14 Nov 2013:


      What a lovely question.

      It seems like we should put a brain on our valentines cards (I might do this next year!)

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