Blake
There is considerable evidence that the carry over of actual memories from donor to transplant recipient occurs regularly
(My comment Alan)
http://hubpages.com/hub/Cellular-Memories-in-Organ-Transplant-RecipientsHere is the case I mentioned is the first post” and more below
One of the few cases we know the patient's name was a woman called Claire Sylvia who received a heart and lung transplant in the 1970's from an eighteen year old male donor who had been in a motorcycle accident. None of this information was known to Sylvia, who upon waking up claimed she had a new and intense craving for beer, chicken nuggets, and green peppers, all food she didn't enjoy prior to the surgery. A change in food preferences is probably the most noted in heart transplant patients. Sylvia wrote a book about her experiences after learning the identity of her donor called A Change of Heart.
Other documented cases have ben perplexing and sometimes extreme. A 47 year old man receiving a heart from a 17 year old black boy suddenly picked up an intense fondness for classical music. The boy whose heart had been donated was killed in a drive-by shooting, still clutching his violin case in his hands. A 47 year old transplant patient claimed that his new heart was responsible for a sudden onset of eating disorders, heralded from the heart's previous owner, a 14 year old girl. Once a change in sexual orientation was even documented in a twenty seven year old lesbian who soon after getting a new heart settled down and married a man.
The most stunning example of cellular memory was found in an eight year old girl who received the heart of a ten year old girl. The recipient was plagued after surgery with vivid nightmares about an attacker and a girl being murdered. After being brought to a psychiatrist her nightmares proved to be so vivid and real that the psychiatrist believed them to be genuine memories.
As it turns out the ten year old whose heart she had just received was murdered and due to the recipients violent reoccurring dreams she was able to describe the events of that horrible encounter and the murderer so well that police soon apprehended, arrested, and convicted the killer.
Other common quirks recorded have been changes in attitude, temperament, vocabulary, patience levels, philosophies, and tastes in food and music. The phenomena has just recently been put into studies. The most notable of which was Dr Paul Peasall's questioning of 150 heart transplant patients which was published in Near-Death Studies magazine in 2002 entitled "Changes in Heart Transplant Recipients That Parallel the Personalities of Their Donors" from which the aforementioned cases are mostly from.
How Cellular Memory Might Work
It is thought that cellular memory might be possible since the discovery that neauropeptides exist not only in the brain as once thought but in all the tissues of the body. These neauropeptides are a way for the brain to "speak" to other bodily organs and for the organs to rely information back. However it is unknown if these newly found circuits could indeed store memories as the brain does in different organs.
Due to the amount of peptides in the heart this organ is seen to have special potential in the study of this phenomena. However many answers still remain. Why don't all transplant recipients have these experiences? It's been theorized this may be due to the fact not all of them are in tune with their body as some other individuals may be. Perhaps the explanation lies with the sensitivity of the individual.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/426766/one_in_ten_transplant_patients_inherit_personalities_of_their_organ/By RACHEL ELLIS
A LEADING scientist will claim this week that he has proof that patients who undergo major organ transplants can inherit the personalities of their donors.
Gary Schwartz, a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, says he has details of 70 cases where this controversial phenomenon has occurred.
And he will argue that it affects at least ten per cent of people who have a heart, lung, kidney or liver transplant. The theory that personality and character traits can be transferred via an organ transplant has existed for some time, but most scientists have ridiculed the notion.
Professor Schwartz now claims to have evidence that in the most extreme cases patients adopt a donor's taste in food, take up the same interests and pastimes as a donor, and even develop talents that a donor possessed. In one case, outlined opposite, a woman who had been health-conscious and calm began craving fast food and became aggressive, just like the biker whose heart and lungs she received.
In another, a seven-year-old girl had nightmares about being killed after being given the heart of a girl who had been murdered.
Professor Schwartz will present his findings at a holistic living conference in London next weekend, titled Icons of the Field. Critics put such events down to chance, the trauma of the surgery or the side-effects of the drugs that transplant patients have to take.
But last night Professor Schwartz, who is also a professor of medicine, neurology, psychiatry and surgery and has published more than 400 scientific papers, said that all transplant patients should be warned that there is a chance they will inherit the personality of a donor.
'It is a big ethical question, but I believe transplant patients should be told there is a possibility that they will take on a donor's characteristics,' he said.
'Then they can have a choice. They can decide what is important to them: being active and being with their family, but with the chance that they might take on some traits of the donor that they might not like. Our research shows that about ten per cent of patients will inherit some of a donor's characteristics. However, it may be higher because most patients are afraid to share their experiences.
'I don't want to frighten people, but to make it more acceptable for them to share what is happening to them.
If this is a real phenomenon, we shouldn't ignore it and it requires further scientific study.' Professor Schwartz's claims are based on the theory that all major organs develop a certain amount of memory. When they are transplanted, this memory can be transferred-from one person to another.
He explained: 'When the organ is placed in the recipient, the information and energy stored in the organ is passed on to the recipient.
'The theory applies to any organ that has cells that are interconnected.
They could be kidneys, liver and even muscles. The stories we have uncovered are very compelling and are completely consistent with this systematic memory hypothesis.' Since starting his research in the Eighties, Professor Schwartz has attracted widespread criticism from the medical establishment.
