When does the brain silence the voice of the heart? Does it improve mental health?
In neuroscience, the brain has long been studied as an organ that observes its environment and reacts to stimuli from it. The brain is also thought to control the internal organs: in a stressful situation, the brain ‘tells’ the heart to beat faster, the skin to sweat or the digestive system to slow down. The brain’s messages are carried by the autonomic nervous system and hormones.
Now, the tide is literally turning. Researchers have realised that it is also worth paying attention to the messages that the internal organs send to the brain.
The body’s messages matter.
In fact, the heart is constantly sending messages to the brain, says researcher Tahnée Engelen from the Department of Psychology at the University of Jyväskylä.
And a surprisingly large part of the brain is constantly monitoring what the heart is doing.”
Engelen is grappling with a big question: do the messages sent by the heart and the way the brain reacts to them even have an impact on a person’s mental wellbeing?
“I want to find out when the brain pays more attention than usual to the messages sent by the heart. My other question is whether an individual’s ability to regulate this attention is linked to better mental wellbeing.”
Does the brain pay closer attention to the heart during certain emotions?
In certain situations, the brain may be particularly sensitive to signals from the heart, the researcher suggests.
“This may happen, for example, during certain emotions or when we are reflecting on things from our own perspective.”
Based on this premise, Engelen is conducting her research: does the brain pay closer attention to the heart when the information is essential to the individual? And what happens in situations that are not so significant to the individual: does the brain then suppress the message sent by the heart?
If this is the case, the result could be reduced anxiety, Engelen predicts.
This conclusion is based on the fact that the brain has a limited amount of resources.
So, monitoring signals that are not important is a waste of essential resources. Every signal the brain processes needs to be carefully calibrated.”
“If we can better understand why and how the brain interprets signals from the body in different ways, we may in future be able to use this knowledge to develop new treatments for mental health disorders,” he says.
Although we know that the heart rate increases in stressful situations, we do not yet understand enough about the biological mechanisms behind this phenomenon, the researcher emphasises.
Rare research using MEG equipment at the University of Jyväskylä
In a pioneering move, Engelen has included a wider range of organs in his research. As well as the heart, the study also analyses signals produced by the lungs, the stomach, the skin and the facial muscles.
The research is carried out using magnetoencephalography (MEG) equipment. This accurately measures the brain’s neural activity.
In the experiment, participants are presented with emotional stories in a laboratory setting that are as authentic and realistic as possible. At the same time, sensors measure the physiological responses (signals) produced by the heart, lungs, stomach, skin and facial muscles.
Our understanding deepens when we are able to demonstrate how these signals from different organs of the body are integrated in the brain and what kind of individual or combined effects they may have.”
Very few research groups in the world have yet carried out similar experiments.
“In particular, the use of the MEG method to study interactions between the brain and the body is still quite rare. At present, only a handful of research groups worldwide are utilising this approach,” explains Engelen.
Competitive Marie Skłodowska-Curie funding brought a researcher to Finland
Tahnée Engelen works at the Department of Psychology at the University of Jyväskylä as part of Professor Tiina Parviainen’s research group. She was brought there by the European Union’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie funding, which enabled this young top researcher to move to Finland from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.
She is very enthusiastic about her research and its important objectives. It is essential to refine our overall understanding of the communication between the brain and the body.
You cannot understand how the brain works unless you know how it processes information coming from both outside and inside the body, and how these sources of information influence one another.”
What are you researching today?
“Today I was pre-processing MEG data. When we receive new data, our first task is to remove any confounding factors from the data before beginning the analyses. Interference can occur in the data, for example, if the subject has moved during the measurement.”
“The beauty of Marie Curie funding is that it aims to support researchers in learning new skills. I hadn’t worked with an MEG system before. Starting to pre-process the data is the first step in learning a new research method,” explains Tahnée Engelen.
