5 Pineal Gland and Hypothalamus

The immune system works without rest in order to protect our body from numberless stimuli from the constantly changing environment. And now we know that the bottom line there is to judge whether a certain stimuli will do good or harm to us. But the operation of the immune system starts from the instance certain matter comes into our body, flow along our capillary, to be found by our sensor cells there.

Is this enough? Is it not necessary for us to judge matters outside our body?

Certainly, it should be. Number one, there is our consciousness working here. If we think that something seems to be wrong, we get alert and try to avoid the possible source of problems. On the contrary, if we find something in our favor, we approach it or let it approach us. A person, a place, or a thing—no matter what it is.

However, there are more occasions of making distinction and decision towards a specific object, without thinking. For instance, food choice. We have times to spit something out the moment we put it in the mouth, without thinking that it is bad or not and that we should not swallow it. Or there are times when we go to some new place, we want to stay there longer or no longer, without actively thinking that the place has something favorable or appalling to us.

Evidently there is the visual dimension in such distinction. We humans have a tendency to get inclined to something visually good. But there is also another dimension that has nothing to do with visuality.

Think about food. Good appearance may invite us to have a bite, which nevertheless can provoke instant spitting out. Or when you find a newly open tea house walking down the street with some of your friends, its chic appearance can seduce you to have a seat inside. But before long, the still strongly remaining chemicals used for its decoration can throw your body into the tension of ‘fight-or-flight’, and you will probably want to leave the place, without actively thinking that something is wrong with it.

What helps you to make such distinction and the following decision? Brain science has already identified the spot where most of the hormones and other chemicals working in such activities are produced— in knowing the taste of food, in feeling happy or pleasant, in feeling uncomfortable or threatened, etc. That spot is called ‘hypothalamus’.

Hypothalamus, like pineal gland, is part of the primitive brain, being located to the front of the latter. It produces pleasure hormones such as dopamine and oxytocin, and regulates the secretion of adrenalin, the fight-or-flight hormone. It lies at the nexus of brain and other part of the nerve system, to have the vital function of transmitting the brain decision to all the other parts of our body. That makes it involved in most of the basic functions of our body, including food intake, sexual desire and activity, body temperature maintenance, feelings and actions of sleep and rest, and regulating our biorhythm.

However, little has known about the function of pineal gland, except that it produces melatonin, another of the pleasure hormone, and a few other kinds of neurotransmitters. You might think that pineal gland should have more important mission than hypothalamus, judging from its location being more to the center and more conserved seemingly. Why is this paucity?

Can it be from the fact that pineal gland might work in ways not that eloquently shown in terms of materiality? If pineal gland identifies an object by the wave it emits, the medical science of today, basically having been rooted from the materialistic anatomy, may not be apt to grasp its working mechanism. Like that was the case with the meridian system, one of the most important structure of our body that had long been ignored by the western medical science as purely ideological, but that has been re-illuminated scientifically only recently.

(We need another series of postings for that.)