Heady stuff on the heart

Not only that, but he finished with a first-class radio programme for the BBC World Service, marking a new departure for this broadcaster, writer and record producer, who has shaped a career from his love for music and social history.

It had been her reference to “her heart” that got the cogs of his mind turning. The moment she brought the intense argument about “a family matter” to a close with the words “I need to go off and listen to my heart”, he knew that a new project was beckoning.

On the face of it, the heart is not a subject that you might think would appeal to Mr Healey, who lives in Marlborough Road, Oxford, with his wife, Jo. Sea shanties, barrack-room ballads, low-life minstrels and Victorian eccentrics are the kind of things that concern his freelance work, chiefly for Radio 4.

For one radio series, At Home With Healey, he even allowed his home, an Aladdin’s cave of antiquarian books and ballad sheets, to be turned into a studio.

But, of late, matters of mortality have much concerned the broadcaster, son of the Labour Party giant Denis Healey.

The passing of his mother, Edna, who died in the summer of heart failure, aged 92, affected him profoundly, causing him, at 61, to reflect on his own outlook on life and the human spirit.

Even before his loss he had become intrigued about the human heart, after his wife drew his attention to newspaper reports about the outcomes of some heart transplant operations.

He was particularly drawn to the case of 63-year-old heart transplant patient William Sheridan.

“As he convalesced after his operation in New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, he discovered an artistic talent for beautiful landscapes and wildlife scenes he had never possessed before,” explained Healey.

“Mr Sheridan then found an explanation. The man who donated his new heart was a keen artist.”

It emerged that similar reports of memory transference were intriguing scientists in growing numbers. Could the recipient of an organ transplant really inherit character traits from the donor?

Mr Healey’s radio programme, The Heart Has Its Reasons, however, addresses an altogether bigger subject than the transplant phenomena. For, as his sister’s word had reminded him, the heart has always had a special role in human affairs.

“We were given this model of the heart being just a pump at O-level biology. But is that true?

“If so, why in poetry and everyday speech do we speak of it as the seat of love and of deep, intuitive truths, as if it possessed a kind of wisdom independent of the brain?”

Dr Alan Watkins, a lecturer in neuroscience and psychological medicine at Imperial College, London, provided him with an interesting take on transplant research carried out by Dr Paul Pearsall.

Dr Watkins tells him: “It’s controversial stuff because Paul interviewed nearly 50 heart transplant patients and about 15 per cent report memories of the donor. From a biological perspective it’s not really that remarkable. Memories are stored in neural networks.

“Of course, the main place where they are stored is in our brain. But the nerve cells in the heart are anatomically no different from those in our brain.

“Paul’s data suggests that when you transplant a heart some of this memory storage is transferred, and some people can detect that information — interestingly, women more than men. It’s a bit like picking up an old CD which has been erased, but there’s still a little bit of information on it.

“One particular cardiac patient woke up after the operation and a few months after recovery started to feel that February 17 was suddenly terribly important but she didn’t know why, and it turned out that was the birthday of the donor.

“It does raise some ethical questions. The trouble is that some media sources have wildly exaggerated the phenomenon and have got people frightened about the consequences. It’s really only 15 per cent of the patients that tune into this data, and then it’s only ghosts of little bits of memories. It’s not like you have somebody else’s heart and you suddenly become somebody else.”

Many heart surgeons, however, remain sceptical about memory transfer through heart transplant, taking the view that any major operation is a trauma, and people do experience changes in their personality after trauma.

As part of his research Mr Healey witnessed an open-heart operation at Papworth, the UK’s largest specialist cardiothoracic hospital. In the programme he claims that research increasingly suggests that the heart does process information as well as pump blood.

“Neurophysiologists have discovered that it has a complex interior nervous system — the intrinsic cardiac ganglia, which act like a cluster of computer terminals and are sophisticated enough to qualify as a ‘little brain’ in their own right.

“Communication between the heart and brain is an ongoing, two-way dialogue. It appears that there are neural pathways by which emotions experienced in the heart physically alter the brain’s electrical activity — with very wide-ranging implications for our physical and psychological well-being.”

But he also went on to explore spiritual traditions surrounding the heart, helped by Dr Jay Lakhani, from the Hindu Academy, and Sister Wendy Beckett, the contemplative nun in the Carmelite monastery at Quidenham, Norfolk, who presented a BBC series of art history documentaries.

For now, however, Mr Healey will return to the book he is writing about The Green Man, an altogether different kind of mystery, involving the mythical leafy figure that turns up in churches, colleges and cloisters of Gothic cathedrals.

He is also preparing a Christmas concert with the Oxford Waits, who take their name from a real-life band of city musicians, known as 'waits,' who flourished in Oxford during the 17th century.

He and the band will be donning period costume once more at the Holywell Music Rooms on December 19.

In Oxford when it comes to fiddles, pipes and the hurdy-gurdy, Tim Healey is rarely away from the heart of things.

lThe Heart Has Its Reasons can be heard on bbc.co.uk/worldservice.