Photo credit: Beth Scuphram, Flicker, Creative Commons license.

It is late at night. You are alone and wandering empty streets in search of your parked car when you hear footsteps creeping up from behind. Your heart pounds, your blood pressure skyrockets. Goose bumps appear on your arms, sweat on your palms. Your stomach knots and your muscles coil, ready to sprint or fight.

Now imagine the same scene, but without any of the body’s innate responses to an external threat. Would you still feel afraid?

Experiences like this reveal the tight integration between brain and body in the creation of mind — the collage of thoughts, perceptions, feelings and personality unique to each of us. The capabilities of the brain alone are astonishing. The supreme organ gives most people a vivid sensory perception of the world. It can preserve memories, enable us to learn and speak, generate emotions and consciousness. But those who might attempt to preserve their mind by uploading its data into a computer miss a critical point: The body is essential to the mind.

How is this crucial brain-body connection orchestrated? The answer involves the very unusual vagus nerve. The longest nerve in the body… read the full article here See Quanta Magazine