Name: What is the Cardiocentric Hypothesis?
Uploaded: 2026-02-04T07:34:32.000Z
Duration: 2 min 5 s
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The cardiocentric hypothesis is the ancient belief that the heart is the primary center of sensation, cognition, and

The cardiocentric hypothesis was deeply rooted in ancient Egyptian thought, where the heart was believed to house intelligence, memory, and

During mummification, the brain was often discarded while the heart was preserved for judgment in the afterlife, reflecting its perceived survival supremacy.

The idea later entered Greek philosophy, most notably through Aristotle, who argued that the heart was the seat of perception and emotion, while the brain functioned mainly as a cooling organ for the blood.

Under this framework, bodily movement and sensation were thought to originate from the heart.

The cardiocentric model dominated much of antiquity but was gradually challenged and eventually overturned by advances in anatomy, physiology, and

neuroscience, particularly during the Hellenistic period and later the Renaissance.

A competing framework Cephalocentrism Brain centered theory held that the brain controls sensation, thought, and voluntary movement.

Early cardiocentric ideas appear independently across multiple ancient cultures.

Egypt, the heart was widely regarded as the seat of life, emotion, and cognition.

Within the Greek tradition, figures such as Pythagoras and later Plato articulated influential philosophical variants of cardiocentrism, helping systematize these ideas in Western thought.

A systematic anatomical A medical account of cephalocentrism appears in the work of Avicenna, a leading figure of the Islamic Golden Age, whose canon of medicine integrated anatomy, clinical observation, and

psychology to locate sensation, cognition, and voluntary movement in the brain and nervous system.

Although the cardiocentric hypothesis was ultimately incorrect, its dominance influenced early anatomical thinking and indirectly contributed to sustained attention on the cardiovascular system, laying groundwork for later discoveries in circulation and cardiac physiology.