Do you know what Aristotle believed?
Aristotle said that we think with our hearts
and the brain only cools the blood coming from our hearts
after thinking.
Doesn't it sound outrageous
that one of the most brilliant minds in human history
had paralleled the human brain to a radiator?
I think we all agree that this time Aristotle was wrong.
For about 10 years, I've been studying the heart-brain relationship.
Basically, the way in which the heart induces neurological disease,
like cerebral vascular accidents,
and how the brain induces heart disease,
like arrhythmias.
And through this research I came across many surprises.
That belief that we only think with our brain
and that the heart only pumps blood, is not that accurate.
For example, how many times you were told to "decide with your heart"?
What does this pump of pure muscle have to do with decision-making?
Or maybe with the intuition,
which sometimes we need to make decisions?
There is a study by Cambridge University
that revolutionized the subject on deciding with our hearts.
And opened the path to what we call:
"research in decision-making."
In this study, subjects were asked to participate in a game
in which they had to make decisions
based on simulated situations on a computer.
There were always two options:
one with a favorable outcome,
the other with a unfavorable outcome.
While participating in the game, they had their heart beats monitored
in order to know how the heart reacted just before making a decision.
And what they found was that
before making a decision that would have a favorable outcome,
the heart beat in a particular way.
But when they were going to make a unfavorable decision,
it beat in a totally different way.
So, apparently,
the heart knew before the brain was conscious,
if the decision about to be taken
was going to be favorable or unfavorable.
I ask you to keep this in mind
and we'll make an exercise ourselves, we'll experiment with our bodies.
Please, close your eyes.
Close your eyes and keep quiet,
and put your hands over your knees, until I tell you so.
While doing this test,
I'd like to know if you can sense your heart beats.
OK, please open your eyes.
Please, raise your hands those of you who were able to sense your heart beats.
Perfect, approximately 50 percent.
Among those who raised their hands
probably many of them have developed
an ability called interoception.
What is the interoception?
It's the capacity of sensing the messages produced by our bodies,
sent by our bodies.
For example, in this case, our heart beats.
Back to the experiment carried out at Cambridge University,
those participating in the game had done what you have
and were classified in those with good interoception,
and those with bad interoception.
The most interesting fact in this experiment was that
those with good interoception made favorable decisions more frequently
than those without good interoception.
The conclusion of this seems to be that those people able to detect,
decode and process messages sent by our hearts before making a decision,
apparently can make better decisions.
Like in any other revolutionary experiment like this one,
it's necessary to check results with other scientists making similar studies.
But, meanwhile, don't you think that sayings like:
"listen to your heart" or "I have gut feeling"
don't sound so wrong when deciding?
But how do brain and heart collaborate in such manner
when making a decision?
There's a specific area inside the brain, the main subject of our research,
called insula.
It's called insula because it resembles an island underneath the cortex,
and is hidden, and extremely connected to the whole brain.
It resembles a local airport
where all connections arrive to and depart from.
But the insula is also connected to other organs
like the heart or the bowel, among others,
and so, it is also an international airport
where all connections to other organs
besides the brain come to and depart from.
Most interestingly about the insula is that it's made purely of neurons,
and the heart is pure muscle.
So you may say:
How can these two organs communicate being so different?
The answer is quite surprising because the heart, like the brain,
has neurons.
Those white spots you see there in the heart are neurons,
group of neurons, where connections from the brain arrive to.
And this you are seeing is a typical heart;
the heart's anatomy.
And what happened throughout human history for a heart like that
to become the universal symbol of love?
What does the heart have to do with loving or falling in love?
In other study,
subjects were asked to bring pictures of someone they loved deeply,
and somebody who didn't mean anything to them.
They used a special kind of magnetic resonance imaging, called "functional,"
that let us see which parts of the brain are being activated
after certain stimuli, or certain actions.
What came out from this experiment is that
when subjects saw the picture of their loved ones,
areas related with pleasure and reward were activated.
And not by chance, one of those areas was indeed the insula.
The insula seems to be related, along with other areas of the brain,
with functions
that allow us to be aware that we're in love.
It allows us to say, "This is the person I am in love with."
And also because of its connections with the brain,
with the heart and with the bowel,
makes it possible that when we are with our beloved
we have tachycardia, palpitations,
and that feeling of having butterflies in our stomach,
when we are in love.
So, we fall in love with our brains, and not with our hearts.
This level of interconnection
with our brain and also the insula,
has many functional repercussions,
but it also may result in health problems.
For example, I would like to show you this graphic:
In the horizontal axis we have the months of May, June and July.
And in the vertical axis,
the number of heart attacks in Munich.
In 2003, the number of heart attacks stayed constant,
there were no changes.
In 2005, something similar happened.
In 2006, during May everything stayed the same;
during June and July there was a sudden rise in the number of heart attacks.
What happened?
OK, many of you already noticed: the 2006 World Soccer Cup.
(Laughter)
And each match played by Germany,
is represented by each peak you see in this graphic.
Most interesting is that peak number 5,
is the match for quarter finals between Germany and Argentina
which final result I'd rather not mention.
(Laughter)
This match was being watched by a friend called Hans at his house.
Hans was sitting in front of the TV,
and saw the first and the second half which ended even
and all the definition by penalty.
Germany was winning 4 to 2,
the last penalty pending,
Cambiasso prepares to kick and Lehmann is at the soccer goal.
Cambiasso kicks, Lehmann gets it, Germany classifies,
and Hans, a extremely passionate fan,
(Laughter)
screams like ever, releases all his energy and adrenaline accumulated
during those 90 minutes plus penalties,
and after finishing screaming
ends up in hospital with a heart attack.
Like many other Germans
that day when the number of heart attacks in Munich tripled.
Hans is a living example
of how some emotions affecting our brain
result in cardiac problems.
The stress suffered by Hans, that adrenaline overdose
compromised his heart and resulted in a heart attack.
So, here we ask ourselves,
do we have to give up and accept that we are exposed
to what this complex brain-heart system
exposes us to, regarding our emotions?
Or is there something we can do?
Science is opening many doors, one of them to ancient techniques.
Techniques that albeit having thousands and thousands of years,
have only been explored serious and intensively during the last years.
One of them is "mindfulness."
Mindfulness is somewhat a form of meditation
that allows us to concentrate in what's going on around,
in physical sensations, emotions,
and in messages from our bodies.
Does this "messages from our bodies" ring a bell to you? Interoception?
When I heard about mindfulness 10 or 12 years ago,
I was absolutely skeptical because, sure enough,
there was no scientific evidence, none.
And as we tend to think with scientific and medical minds,
if is not proven, it's useless.
So look at what happened during the last 10 years.
From 2005 to 2015:
Scientific publications which have the word "mindfulness" in their title.
An important increase and most of them,
the most important part of the publications you're seeing,
is related to how useful mindfulness can be to alleviate things like stress.
I know you are skeptical
and have a curious mind
and you won't believe anything I say.
So let's pretend you're scientists,
and I ask you to think which stressful situation we may use
to prove whether mindfulness is useful in fighting stress or not.
Which is the worst-case scenario?
War.
In California, there is a center
where Marines are trained before being sent to combat.
It's the last training when a drill is carried out,
most stressful,
where Marines are faced with soldiers resembling
those they will confront.
Noises are the same,
smells are the same,
and said by they themselves,
it's the most stressful moment before going to war.
In this training center,
half the Marines were offered to do mindfulness during eight weeks.
The rest had usual training.
They did mindfulness training, and went through this terrible drill,
and afterwards, they completed a questionnaire
assessing how stressed they were.
Interestingly, those who underwent mindfulness training,
were much less stressed out, than those who didn't.
You may say, "Of course, they were biased,
as they did mindfulness, they were bound to say they were less stressed."
But they were also measured a protein in their blood released by the brain
in extremely stressful situations.
And those who had done mindfulness had much lower levels
than those who had not.
So, there's an objective and a subjective demonstration
that there is something we can do to diminish stress.
And there are plenty of experiments like this one, portrayed in this graphic.
Thus, it seems that thanks to practices existing for a long time,
and which science is proving nowadays,
we may have the possibility of decreasing the impact some emotions have
on our health and on our heart-brain system.
Maybe in the future, science will tell,
even diseases like stroke and heart attacks may be prevented
by these kind of practices.
For now, I think we all have
to acknowledge the genius of Aristotle, the first to think
that heart and brain act as a system.
And I think it is good to remember the words by a wise man who said,
"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination."
Thank you very much.
(Applause)