Newly detailed nerve links between brain and other organs shape ...

The neural networks throughout the interior of the body, including those surrounding the hollow organs, such as the intestines and the heart, send complex sensory input to the skull-based brain. This data forms the foundation for visceral maps that help us have a “gut feeling” or a “heartfelt” sense. Such input from the body forms a vital source of

In the body, this sensory network has a name—interoception—and a location—the brain, stretching from the cerebral cortex to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) and down into the insula. The interoceptive system provides an overview of the homeostatic function of the entire body, a type of status update on how your body i

consciousness — that ultimate lens of being, which shapes our entire experience of life and makes blue appear blue and gives poems their air of wonder — is not a mental activity confined to the brain but a complex embodied phenomenon governed by the nervous-system activity we call feeling.

How this body-wide sensory system works could be likened to a kind of hierarchy in a walled city, where everyday details of the housekeeping do not bother the “head office” of the central nervous system: the brain. In this metaphor there are gatekeepers, regulating at various levels of management, throughout the whole connected sensory architecture