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Neuroscience & Karma
functions such as sex, reproduction and location, growth, metabolism and thyroid activity. Thus inter-connection of pituitary and hypothalamus is a typical instance of the interlocking of the two systems.
Recent studies on neuro-secretions leave no doubt that the nervous system has its own endocrine specialization for the release of hormones. The functional interlocking is so remarkable that nervous and endocrine elements are coming to be regarded as constituting a single integrated system called neuro-endocrine system. As research deepens our knowledge of coordinator systems, it becomes increasingly apparent that their products participate not only in every bodily function, but have profound influence upon the mental states and behaviour of individuals.
The neuro-endocrine system is the seat of feelings, emotions and passions of man. Impulses and urges which are the forerunners of emotions and passions, not only generate feelings but also command appropriate action that satisfy the need. To understand the behaviour and its determinants, it is not enough to know about nerve-cells and their connections. We have to appreciate all the manifold influences that determine what we may call our moods and all the facts of human behaviour.
Love, hate and fear are endocrine expressions. It is the primitive
1. The intimate reciprocal relationship between the two systems can be illustrated as
under : The visual stimulus of the beauty of a pretty girl causes electric nerve impulses to activate the anterior pituitary of a young male with the hypothalamus as an intermediary. The pituitary, in turn, produces and delivers the gonadotrophin hormone to sex glands. The nerve and hormone signals make his heart beat faster, increase blood
pressure, tense muscles and cause sexual arousal. 2. The words emotion, passion, feeling, desire etc. refer to subjective states of mind with
slight difference in meaning, depending on the context. It is difficult to translate ordinary language into a more scientificone. Psychologists and neurologists have found it difficult to produce an exact language with which they can talk precisely about needs and desires, loves and fears, beliefs and morals, and so on, as was possible in the case of physics, cbemistry and mathematics. Moreover, common speech is not at all the same in different languages. While the word 'emotion', for instance, is the most general, and is used to mean all states of mind, the word 'desire' refers to feeling of wanting or noeding. Feeling' is more informal and refers to both weak and intense states. On the other hand, the words 'urge', 'drive', 'impulse', and 'instinct' refer to impulsive forces which produce the above mental states, and are, therefore, forerunners of emotions.
