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Asked by gigi123 to David, Helen, Ian, rhysphillips on 23 Jun 2011.
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David Corne answered on 22 Jun 2011:
When you see babies waving their arms and legs around, that’s how they train their brains to control their arms and legs – slowly learning how to get their limbs to do what they want. If the heart was controlled in the same way, consciously, it would be something we would have to learn – and far too dangerous because we’d keep getting it wrong in the early stages. WIth arm and leg movements, it’s OK to do trial and error. With heartbeats, errors can kill! So, evolution has made sure that heartbeat is completely unconscious with a built-in control program.
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Rhys Phillips answered on 22 Jun 2011:
Because if it could we could accidentally kill ourselves! Evolution is a very clever thing!
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Ian van der Linde answered on 22 Jun 2011:
Lots of our bodily functions aren’t under conscious control – we don’t want to have to think about how to digest food, or control our body temperature, or how fast our heart needs to beat as we play football, so these functions are under the control of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). They are still controlled by the brain to varying degrees (although the heart has a local pacemaking mechanisms too), it’s just that they are not controlled consciously by thinking about them. Good thing too – we have enough to worry about already!
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Helen Fletcher answered on 23 Jun 2011:
That would be far too risky! If you had the ability to decide to stop it, you might do that accidentally- and then you’d be sorry! And controlling how fast it beat in different situations would be very complicated- you’d have to be constantly thinking about it and modifying it. Luckily your body can do this automatically and acurately.
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