In the case of a spinal break that causes someone to become paralyzed, why would organs and other bodily functions un-affected if the cause is a separation of the brain’s ability to communicate with the body? Does the brain not also subconsciously control breathing, heart beat, etc?
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Not all organs function directly from nerves coming from the spinal cord.
Breathing does have some nerves from the spinal cord, but the nerves involved come from very high up in the spine, so you would need damage high up to stop breathing.
Other organs do have nerves going to them that don’t go through the spine. The vagus nerve is one of these and is a major component of the autonomic nervous system and has an impact of how the organs work.
There are also other ways the organs work that don’t involve nerves at all. Hormones (chemicals secreted by one organ into the blood to have an effect of other part of the body) is one way. For example insulin. When we eat and digest food, the sugar goes into our blood. To be able to come out of the blood into tissues that need it, our pancreas makes and releases insulin. Insulin is like a key that opens a door to allow the sugar into other cells. Because the pancreas senses blood sugar levels directly from the blood, it is unaffected by spinal cord damage and continues to make insulin.
You then have other organs that function without nerves and with limited hormone input. The kidneys for example are effectively just filters. In very simple terms they sieve out waste products and some water to help get rid of them. This happens automatically. There is then some hormone control over how much or little it does this (eg if we are dehydrated we need to keep as much water as we can, so a hormone is produced to get the kidney to reduce the amount of urine produced).
Hope this helps
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