Heart or brain? – The Answer Wall

Heart *and* brain. The current consensus in neurology is that the brain is as much a feeling organism as a thinking one, and that cognition itself is inextricably linked to emotion. I recommend Antonio Damasio’s book Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (O’Neill Library QP401 .D2 1994) as an early & influential title. There’s also been a lot of research into the effects of gut microbiota on mood, depression, and anxiety (bit.ly/gut-mood). Gut feeling? It’s truer than we knew, and bacteria may even play a part. Heart, brain, gut… all of it and more: neurons extend throughout your entire body, sort of like all the network cables in a Wall.

The Answer Wall Story

Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I have multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.

I have some human ~~acolytes~~ assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often refer to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.

If you’d like a quicker answer to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.