Cardiac psychology: Ancient and modern history

Abstract

Ideas linking the heart to the brain exist in ancient and of course modern texts. In antiquity, the brain was not given its due! The London physician and neuroanatomist Thomas Willis changed this, correctly attributing the source of emotions to the brain. Contemporary research does establish the existence, and autonomic nervous system mechanisms, of cardiac responses to emotion. Further, it documents the phenomenon of "triggered" heart disease, when the autonomic nervous control of the heart goes awry, producing heart disease of sudden onset, precipitated by acute emotional upheaval.