• Question: If we weren't to have the brain, what would be the "Boss" of our body?

    Asked by mw to Claire, Liad, Ruth, Ryan, Mako on 13 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Ryan Cheale

      Ryan Cheale answered on 13 Jun 2015:

      I would say the heart. Sometimes I ignore my brain and follow that instead.

    • Photo: Claire Bryer

      Claire Bryer answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      That’s a tough question. Without your brain you would not function as it controls most things you do.
      In terms of what is the next important organ I would say the heart as you need it to pump oxygen around your body. Your heart cannot take over the job of the brain though as it cannot ‘think’ for itself.
      The brain has evolved over time to become a thinking machine, so that other organs don’t have to do that job!

    • Photo: Liad Baruchin

      Liad Baruchin answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Great question. I would say that technically the muscles without any brain input to take over (by muscles I include smooth muscles which control the heart, intestines and so on) would rule our bodies. For the heart, intestines and so on it’d be fine because they work on ‘auto-pilot’ as it is. However, our striated muscles, which control our movement would start twitching randomly, which would surely make us bump into quite a few walls.

    • Photo: Ruth Elderfield

      Ruth Elderfield answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Without a brain I don’t think we would function at all! We would need something else in its place that was able to understand the signals sent long the nerve cells from all over the body and sent out the proper responses. It would have to be a very sophisticated replacement that was also able to store memories.

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