“The motor system extends throughout the body, from neurons in the spinal cord to neurons in the brainstem and cortex” (Ratey 155).

In an article on suicide and its causes, the author writes about serotonin, mentioning that “Serotonin is only one molecule in the intricate biochemical network named the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, in which the hypothalamus and pituitary glands in the brain communicate with the adrenal glands atop the kidneys” (Ezzell 50).

Shulgin writes of one of his compounds: “We saw DOB go directly into the lung, not into the brain. There are neurons in the lung...” (quoted in Pinchbeck 209).

“Nicotine,” says Sergei A. Grando, a dermatologist at U.C. Davis who studies nicotine, “isn’t just a drug that stimulates neurons. It does the exact same thing to cells outside of the nervous system” (Kendall Morgan, “More than a Kick.” Science News, March 22, 2003, 184).

“...our immune systems are... known to work by selection. The British psychologist Henry Plotkin ([Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge, London, Penguin] 1993) refers to both brains and immune systems as ‘Darwin machines’...” (Blackmore 16).

V.R. Edgerton, a neuroscientist at UCLA, “theorized in the early eighties that the spinal cord could function independently of the brain. This was at odds with the prevailing view that the spinal cord was merely a cable connecting the brain and body. ‘When scientists think they know how something works, it becomes difficult to get new ideas accepted,’ Edgerton told” Jerome Groopman (The New Yorker, Nov. 10, 2003, page 85: “The Reeve Effect”, about Christopher Reeve and recovery from paralysis).

Brain-body in science fiction: “‘Downloading the brain’s patterns isn’t enough. Everything you know and think is embedded in your neurons, but your consciousness is in the cells of your entire body. Your mind is really a complex of brains, with major contributions from the nervous and immune systems. The flesh is intelligent, all flesh, and all of it contributes to your personality at one level or another. Take the body away, and you become near-beer, bitter without the kick’” (Bear, Vitals, 26). “ ‘The Little Mothers [bacteria] watch over us all.... Sever the connections between the body and their ministrations, and you block far more than the path to old age. Have you ever felt fit and in tune? Life is good? Perhaps you have a mystical feeling of connection with Nature, with something higher? This is the voice of the Little Mothers. All the stresses and rewards of life are balanced, you are doing well, and they approve. To be judged and found wanting, that is painful. But take those voices away, and you soon lose all balance. We are far more than just brains encased in bone. Larger and older minds live inside our bodies and all around us, speaking in languages I have worked all my life to interpret.... Perhaps we are only a dream the bacteria are having’” (Bear, Vitals, 342).

For Therese Schroeder-Sheker, a musician and “professor of thanatology,” “hearing is not confined to the ears alone; instead, the entire skin is an organ of perception bathed in what she refers to as ‘tonal substance.’ Music functions within the entire body rather than being confined to a direction link from ears to brain” (Blackwing 191). Any deaf person could tell you this.