Many actions are controlled by autonomic nerves, except some, like breathing, can be interfered by the conscious, while others, like the beating of the heart, cannot. In fact, for breathing, the conscious decision can override the autonomic nerves such as holding your breath until a certain point. It’s like an admin user vs a guest user. But how does such privilege system work in terms of neurons? How does the control alternate between the conscious and the autonomic system?
“You are now manually beating your heart”. Nope, that doesn’t work no matter how hard you try it (except for Buddha monks I suppose), so does this mean there are no physical neuron connections between the conscious and the heart?
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You can control your breathing because you can control your diaphragm and the muscles of your thoracic cage by demand.
The heart, on the other hand, isn’t receiving a signal from your brain for every beat. The heart itself fires the signal that causes it to beat on it’s own. That signal is produced by the SA node of the heart (basically the heart’s pacemaker) with no direct intervention from the brain whatsoever.
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