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It has not always been obvious that brains are involved in thinking, memory, sensation, or perception. In the ancient world, including the great civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, reaching back 5000 years, the brain was regarded as as unimportant organ, because in death it is bloodless and in life it is seldom felt by its owner. The mind was associated with the stomach, the liver or gall bladder, and especially with the heart which is clearly responsive to emotion and effort. Echoes linger from these ideas in modern speech, in words such as ‘phlematic‘, ‘gall‘, ‘choleric‘, as well as ‘heartless‘.

Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, Fifth Edition (Princeton Science Library)
Richard L. Gregory
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Background on Richard Gregory