For hundreds of years, the heart is mentioned when explaining emotional aspects of our lives. Sayings such as ‘they broke my heart’, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ and ‘follow your heart’ are not uncommon in everyday conversation. But could these be more than metaphors? Could it be that some of our emotions and memories are actually stored in the heart as well as the brain? The theory is known as cellular memory. Most medical academics are sceptical, but the evidence for such a theory is mounting up and hard to explain away.
Many transplant patients claim to be more out going, adventurous and discover a love of extreme sports after their surgery. Although many of them believe they have gotten such attributes from their donor they cannot know for sure due to the strict confidentiality rules surrounding donors. Such cases are easily explained away by skeptics. The patients have in a way been given a second chance at life, to live without the illness that plagued them for years. Of course they would become more out going and want to live life to the full which could explain the new love of extreme sports. However the more specific cases are rare, but mind blowing.
One example is a woman named Claire Sylvia. She received a heart and lungs from an 18 year old male. All Claire was told was that it was from a young man who had died in an accident. Within three months of being given the transplant Claire began to crave beer – a drink she had never cared for, and loved to eat green peppers – a food she had hated prior to the transplant. She also had an overwhelming sense that her donor had been named Tim. When asking the hospital about this they agreed to look more into the situation and ask the donors family if the confidentiality could be broken. They did this because she was correct, the young man had been named Tim. She met his family and was also informed that he had a love of beer and green peppers.
The most shocking example I have come across whilst researching this has been that of an eight year old girl who received the heart of a ten year old girl. After surgery the young girl began having vivid nightmares about a girl being murdered. The dreams became so distressing she was sent to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist believed that the dreams were so vivid they had to be actual memories. Yes, you guessed it, the donor had been murdered and this little girl was seeing the last moments of her donors life. The dreams were so vivd and accurate that they even helped the police convict the killer.
Cellular theory has been given more weight after the discovery that neuropeptides exist not only in the brain as once thought but in all the tissues of the body. These neuropeptides 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.
Many questions remain. If such a phenomenon is true, why don’t all transplant patients experience it? Lots of people receive hearts and lungs from donors and feel exactly the same as they did (apart from a lot better medically of course). Could it be that some individuals are more ‘in tune’ with their bodies and therefore their organs store more memories than others which are then passed on?
One thing is for sure, a lot more research into this needs to be done. It can be distressing for a patient to feel so strongly the personality of their donor to be told it is nonsense and it could open the door to a huge medical discovery.
Here is a link to the documentary I watched that gave me the blog idea. Enjoy, it’s amazing. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/transplanting-memories/4od
libbyayres 
Wow, this is incredible! I have read of a case where somebody who had received a donor heart began to feel panicked and scared every time a motorbike drove past and it turned out the donor had died in a motor cycle accident. There is definitely a lot of qualitative evidence to suggest that there is some kind of memory being retained in cells but unfortunately, there is little in the way of quantitative data to support the theory. Just by googling this topic, I found many links to spirituality and religious sites but few to genuine scientific research which is a shame because it’s such an interesting idea. There are many theories as to how the brain stores memory, which is illustrated by Raaijmakers and Shiffrin (2002) so presumably ordinary body cells would need to be able to store memories in the same way as the brain, for example by rehearsal or processing the meaning – which seems unlikely to happen in a single cell. However, as the heart has an intrinsic nervous system and the brain has an extremely well developed one, the memories could be a result of the nervous system, but there needs to be much more research into this. It could also help in Psychology to understand the exact way in which the brain stores memories
If you’re particularly interested in this topic. you may want to look into information about “phantom limbs” where amputees report feeling pain where the amputated limb would have been; Sherman, Sherman and Parker (1984) found that this phenomenon is present in 78% of amputees.
References:
Raaijmakers, J.G.W., & Shiffrin, R.M. (2002). Models of memory. Steven’s Handbook of Experimental Psychology. DOI: 10.1002/0471214426.pas0202
Sherman, R. A., Sherman, C.J. & Parker, L. (1984). Chronic phantom and stump pain among American veterans: Results of a survey. Pain 18: 83–95. Retrieved from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6709380
Yes, I had trouble finding scientific references. Your references look interesting though I will check them out! You are right, there is a lot of qualitative data though. It would be hard to explore the idea more scientifically. It is of course unethical to force transplants on healthy individuals or to expect a healthy person to donate a vital organ which would result in death. The only way to explore the matter ethically would be to keep track of a large number of transplant patients, the personality traits of them and their donor and do a comparison before and after surgery. However no two cases would ever be the same and there are so many factors that cannot be controlled. To carry out such an experiment confidentiality laws would have to be re assessed and perhaps abolished which could lead to problems of its own. The way forward in this case is to research more into the tissue that makes up our organs to answer the question, and it store memories?
Interesting blog.However there are also many other possibilities for the strange after experiences or feelings the patients encounter for example the hospital grapevine theory which is the theory that patients whilst in theatre are influence by information they may over hear from nurses whilst under anesthesia because hospital staff discussing the donor is not a breach of patient confidentiality therefore they are more inclined to do so.There is also the drug theory that disproves the cellular theory which believes that when patients take drugs to ensure their immune system does not destroy their new organ they result in changes in personality however in my personal opinion this does not provide explanation for such specific new personality traits and i believe that this is one strange occurance that the cause will never be proven scientifically.
This is a fascinating topic! However, I feel that it would be difficult to study this scientifically because there is currently so little scientific knowledge available about the existence of cellular memory. Also, if possible to study it is likely that it will only be done so through case studies because it is such a rare phenomenon and there would be ethical issues surrounding studying this topic. But it is definitely interesting that patients have reported having memories that belonged to their donor and so this is something which should be looked into further.
Due to the lack of scientific research, this theory is currently seen as a pseudoscientific theory, but if more research is conducted into this area maybe we would be able to discover if it truly is possible. Although recent research has shown that organs, such as the heart, have their own nervous system in order to control themselves, further research needs to be conducted before we can state that body memory is scientifically possible.
Also, could it be that we experience ‘body memories’ because memories are not connected to the brain but to the mind as well which exists all the way through our body and communicates with the brain. There is a possibility that the mind can communicate memories/personality traits to the brain through the use of peptides which exist in muscles and organs throughout the body. This could explain why an individual would experience traits of their previos donor.
However, there is little evidence to support any of these claims about how cellular memory works or even for it’s existence.
But it is also something that truly interests us all and the idea of cellular memory has been used in many films, dating all the way back to the 1920s.