Argument
Pineal gland
Overview
The pineal gland (also called the pineal body) is a small endocrine gland in the brain of most vertebrates. It produces melatonin, a serotonin-derived hormone, which modulates sleep patterns following the diurnal cycles. The shape of the gland resembles a pine cone, which gives it its name.
The pineal gland is located in the epithalamus, near the center of the brain, between the two hemispheres, tucked in a groove where the two halves of the thalamus join. It is one of the neuroendocrine secretory circumventricular organs in which capillaries are mostly permeable to solutes in the blood.
The pineal gland is present in almost all vertebrates, but is absent in protochordates, in which there is a simple pineal homologue. The hagfish, archaic vertebrates, lack a pineal gland. In some species of amphibians and reptiles, the gland is linked to a light-sensing organ, variously called the parietal eye, the pineal eye or the third eye. Reconstruction of the biological evolution pattern suggests that the pineal gland was originally a kind of atrophied photoreceptor that developed into a neuroendocrine organ.
Galen in the 2nd century C.E. could not find any functional role and regarded the gland as a structural support for the brain tissue. He gave the name konarion, meaning small cone or pinecone, which during the Renaissance was translated into Latin as pinealis. The 17th-century philosopher René Descartes regarded the gland as the primary locus of mind-body interaction, describing it as the "principal seat of the soul".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Certainly the area of representation in our mind is not simply equivalent to the area of our body. But in so far as the confines of mental representation part company with the confines of the body, it is not that they may contract and fall back upon the pineal gland, but that they may expand and advance over the surrounding world. The mind does not represent its own body merely, it represents the world in so far as…
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
Names Pineal gland several times.
Three at the entry of the arterious vein; which being disposed quite contrary, permit only the bloud which is in that concavity to pass to the lungs; but not that which is in the lungs to return thither.
René Descartes, A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences
States what Pineal gland is; the author is tied to Pineal gland in the knowledge graph.
Beneath these are the eyes, which by nature are two in number: the parts of each eye are, first, the upper and under eyelid, the edges of which are furnished with hair. Within the eye, the moist part with which we see is called the pupil; round this is the iris, and this is surrounded by the white. Two corners of the eye are formed at the junction of the eyelids, one in the direction of the nose, the other towards…
Aristotle, Aristotle's History of Animals In Ten Books
States what Pineal gland is.
Philosophers who discussed Pineal gland
Related ideas
- Galen
- H. P. Lovecraft
- Latin
- Metaphysics
- Pneuma
- Georges Bataille
- Neuron
- Occult
- René Descartes
- Renaissance
- Mysticism
- The New Yorker
- Old French
- Yale University
- Embryo
- Brain
- Theosophy
- Common Era
- Human
- Evolution
- Eris (mythology)
- 17th century
- Acorn
Place in the tradition
Part of Consciousness.