Do you think the heart or the brain is the most important organ?

Question: Do you think the heart or the brain is the most important organ?
- Keywords:
  human body,
  organ
Asked by anon-293870 on 4 May 2021.
- Emma Yhnell answered on 4 May 2021:
  
  It’s a tricky question as we need both to be able to be alive.
  As a brain scientist I’d have to say brain! You have to look after your brain as it is really hard to repair the brain if it is poorly.
  Although some people can have heart transplants, it isn’t allowed for us to give people brain transplants yet, so that’s why we have to take extra special care to keep our brains healthy.
- Chris Waudby answered on 4 May 2021:
  
  We’d be in trouble without either of them! If you do have a problem with your heart though, we can build artificial hearts for patients who are waiting for a transplant to become available, or who aren’t able to receive a transplant. On the other hand, your brain is irreplaceable, so for that reason I’d say it’s the most important! 🧠
- YIRUI JIANG answered on 5 May 2021:
  
  They are both very important!
  
  The heart powers your body.
  
  The brain powers your soul.
  
  They all make you unique.
- Christopher Todd answered on 5 May 2021:
  
  For humans, both are very important. The brain needs blood to work, however all our thoughts and personality are in our brains so if we lose that we lose ourselves.
  
  However many animals are able to survive without a brain or a heart!!
  Some animals like starfish don’t have just a central brain, they have nerves which help each of the arms feel the world around them but no single brain organ like we have.
- Axel Moore answered on 5 May 2021:
  
  Hands down the brain!
- Jennifer Graham answered on 5 May 2021:
  
  This is a great question! The brain gets my vote though, based on the fact that all our opinions, personality and ideas come from our brains – with a different brain you would be a different person, and that makes it a very special thing.
- John Grasmeder answered on 5 May 2021:
  
  I think it’s the brain because it makes each of us who we as a person and we’re all different. The brain cannot be replaced with another. The heart is really important of course, we couldn’t live without it. But there are some people whose hearts have stopped working properly and they have had them replaced with hearts from other people. There are even machines called “artificial hearts” which can do some of the job of a heart. As far as I know, no one’s ever come up with an “artificial brain.”
- Alison McNeilly answered on 5 May 2021:
  
  That’s a really good question. You can’t live without a brain but you can live (for short periods of time) on by-pass for the heart – the surgeons do this when they operate on your heart, so I would say the brain is most important.
- Julia Sarju answered on 5 May 2021:
  
  That is a hard question! Do you mean practically or symbolically?
  If I think about which is most interesting to me, I would have to go for the brain.
- Philip Drake answered on 5 May 2021:
  
  The brain! The brain is what makes you who you are. They are unique to us all. We can build artifical hearts and do heart transplants but we can not replace the brain!
- Emily Lewis answered on 5 May 2021:
  
  The human brain is one of the most interesting objects in the universe!
  
  Hearts are great, they are an organ for pumping blood around your body but I see them as more the battery of a human while the brain is like a computer.
  
  Brains are really interesting and complex, and we still don’t fully understand how consciousness and human intelligence works. How does the brain know it is a person? If we are made of the same stuff as everything else in the universe (protons and neutrons), what makes brains different?
  
  So both are important, but the brain is definitely my favourite!
- Dhruti Devshi answered on 5 May 2021:
  
  The brain. It is truly irreplaceable!
- Jamil Jubrail answered on 5 May 2021:
  
  What an insightful question! Both are very important but my vote would go to the brain. The brain controls everything about us including how our heart works. Although, it is true the heart helps us feel different emotions and the brain attempts to control this!
- Stephanie Sargeant answered on 12 May 2021:
  
  Tricky question! Technically we need both but I think my vote would go for the brain as they’re the bit that’s the bit that makes us who we are 🙂
- Daniel Hurst answered on 14 May 2021:
  
  You’d be pretty suck without either! But I think I’d have to go with the brain, purely on the fact that we are yet to carry out a brain transplant but a heart transplant is doable.

Question: Do you think the heart or the brain is the most important organ?

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