More than 37 years ago, when Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed his first heart transplant surgery at Louis Washkansky, a 53-year-old South African grocery store with chronic heart disease, science illuminated ways of changing times in the medical field. Currently, approximately 5,000 heart transplants are performed worldwide each year. This number has increased over the past decade. Because the need for a heart transplant is much greater than the number of available organs, the number of heart transplants performed annually is limited by the number of available donor organs.
However, if you have a heart transplant, you may get a lot of luggage in the form of '.Mobile phone memory'.
What are they?
Please read to know.
Canadian Anne Marie Switzer was born with a congenital heart disease known as the transposition of the large blood vessels and had been waiting for a new heart for 50 years. She had her first heart surgery two days ago and spent 50 years in the hospital before she finally got a donor match in 2016.
At age 50, she got the gift she had prayed for forever: a new heart. But something changed shortly after her heart transplant – something she couldn't explain easily. Most importantly, Switzer insisted that her feelings of love are no longer the same. Switzer stated that when she saw her husband Ed, she no longer felt the butterfly inside. In her words, “I don't know when I first noticed it. I know I love my family, but I don't have that squishy feeling. [anymore]. I love my husband, but I'm not twittered anymore,” she told Dailymail.
Switzer (now 58) stated, “It's definitely a loss… because I'm a person of the heart. I'm a person of love. I'm a person of the relationship. I don't know how many people told me. And I miss it.”
But why did that happen to Switzer?
These phenomena are not unheard of, but they are still very rare. Research shows that patients like Mrs. Switzer may have “inherited” memories from donors.
Some researchers believe that it is possible for donor organs to retain and even pass on the characteristics and experience of their original owners to new recipients through a process known as cellular memory.
In fact, one study published in MDPI last year found that nearly nine of the 10 organ recipients surveyed reported changes in personality.
What is this “strange” phenomenon?
The term usually refers to how the body develops immunity to disease, according to Dr. Michael McDonald, medical director of the Azimella Heart Transplant Center at Toronto General Hospital. In his words, “We all have cellular memories as part of an adaptive immune response that protects the safety of illness, infection, cancer and foreigners,” he told the CBC.
Putting it differently, our bodies can remember how we fight diseases we have encountered before. However, transplant medicine experts are working to ensure that the same reaction does not reject new organs as potentially harmful foreign bodies.
According to McDonald, “When I'm thinking [the] The strict clinical function of the organ, I am interested in: is it doing what others in the body told to do? Do you squeeze blood around your body? Is it empty? Is the heart rhythm normal? Beyond that, what you know is that it is difficult to say whether there are other components in what the mind can offer, especially from donors that are unique to the recipient. ”
Another discussion:
Some researchers take ideas about which organs can be preserved and take that very far.
In a 2019 journal article published in Medical Hypotheses, Dr. Mitchell Liester published the idea that “memories of a donor's lifespan are preserved in donated heart cells and “remembered” by recipients after transplant surgery.”
However, the evidence for that is inconclusive and highly controversial.
Physical organs cannot change your personality, memory, or your feelings, according to Dr. John Wallwork, former director of transplant services at the UK National Health Service (NHS). In his words, “Our culture sees the heart as a seat for life, love and soul. There is no basis in science for this,” he was quoted as saying by the CBC.
A 1992 German study looked at 47 patients who had undergone organ transplants, finding that most of them had not experienced any changes in their personality. 15% of them revealed they had experienced change, but it was attributed to the trauma of experiencing life-threatening procedures. Six percent said their personality had changed and brought it to a new mind.
Although few, Liester has reported on personality changes after the existence of heart transplants for nearly 50 years. However, he added, “This phenomenon is not well studied and poorly understood. The lack of an appropriate explanatory model, nor the doubts about the existence of such changes, disproves the emergence of this experience.”
In a 2016 blog post by the University of Melbourne, he said that many studies that investigated this phenomenon were conducted with very small sample sizes and sometimes with subjects selected to support researcher bias. And the debate continues. In 2021, the article cited a 1992 German study to provide a “hypothetical explanation” for what is called the organ donor's “transmission of cardiac memory.”
However, McDonald admitted that a heart transplant is “one of the most transformative experiences someone could have.” In his words, “We hear a lot when we meet our patients about the various sensory, emotional, cognitive and personal experiences we have after recovering from a transplant.”
In a 2024 review of the Cureus Journal, the researcher wrote: “New evidence suggests that heart transplants may involve the transfer of donor personality traits and memory to recipients, as well as challenge traditional views of memory and identity.
The team suggested that these changes could be due to cellular memory migration. This suggests that individual cells may be able to form memories. However, the mechanism for this is still unknown.
Furthermore, a 2020 review suggested that memory can be stored in DNA, RNA, and proteins in cells outside the brain.
What is cellular memory?
Although not scientifically proven, experiencing memories from other people's lives after a heart transplant is a phenomenon reported by recipients, often referred to as “cell memory.” However, most medical professionals consider this kind of feeling very unlikely and attribute it to important life changes and psychological factors associated with trauma in the transplant process.
Important points to consider:
There is no scientific consensus: There is no established scientific evidence to support the idea that memory can be transmitted through organ transplantation.
Possible explanations: Psychological Factors: The stress and emotional effects of transplants can manifest as vivid dreams or intrusive thoughts that can be misunderstood as “donor memories.”
Confirmation bias: People may be more likely to focus and interpret them, dismissing those who don't, in line with the idea of “donor memory.”
“Heart” as a symbol: The mind is often associated with emotions and identity, allowing people to believe that a new mind can bring new emotions and perspectives.
More “personal” experience:
Since her transplant, Switzer has noticed other changes in her personality.
For example, she ended up wanting them in all her burgers, not caring about the taste of pickles.
Switzer never met her donor, but she was allowed to write a thank you letter to her family through a heart transplant clinic.
She strongly believed that the changes she felt had something to do with her new mind.
She made it clear that no one believes that, except for those who have experienced it, can truly speak to the recipient experience of a heart transplant. In her words, “They can do it [only] They talk to what they know, but they can't talk to what they know unless they have that experience. ”
