Organ transplants can have unintended consequences: changes in the recipient's food, gender, personality, etc.

Forty-seven participants in this study (23 heart recipients and 24 other organ recipients) completed an online survey. They found that 89 percent of all transplant recipients reported a change in personality after transplant surgery, and there were no significant differences between heart recipients and recipients of other organs.

The personality changes they reported included changes in preferences for food, music, art, intimacy, leisure activities, and professional pursuits. Some people experienced “new” memories, increased social and sexual adaptability, increased cognitive abilities, and spiritual or religious events.

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Some recipients share accounts of “memories” that seem disconnected from their own personal experiences. These memories often include sensory perceptions that are clearly related to the organ donor.

The paper highlights this example. “A 56-year-old university professor received the heart of a 34-year-old police officer who tragically lost his life after being shot in the face.

“After the transplant, the recipient reported a strange experience, saying, 'A few weeks after I got the heart, I started having dreams.'” When the flash hits the face, it gets really hot. Masu. It actually burns. ”

Theories and other experiences that explain this vary.

Psychological theory suggests that recipient personality traits can influence organ transplantation. For example, it has been proposed that personality changes may result from fantasies the recipient has about the donor and its organs.

Personality changes may also be due to recipients' use of defense mechanisms to cope with the stress associated with the transplant procedure.

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The biochemical hypothesis suggests that the memory and personality traits of the donor may be preserved in the donated organ and transmitted to the recipient.

For example, the authors found that memory traces or traces of past experiences, or “engrams,” are transferred to donors via exosomes, tiny sac-like structures that occur inside cells and contain some of the cell's proteins. It states that it may be transmitted from the brain to the recipient's brain. , DNA and RNA.

The idea that cellular memory is transferred between donor and recipient, such as through DNA or RNA memory, has been suggested.

Biochemical mechanisms for the transmission of personality traits through the intracardiac nervous system, a system of neurons within the heart that transmit and store information using chemical neurotransmitters, are discussed.

This system, also known as the “heart-brain,” is thought to store potentially personality-altering memories that are passed on to recipients during transplant surgery.

Another hypothesis has to do with the recipient's electromagnetic field, suggesting that donor personality information is stored in the donor's heart's electromagnetic field and may be transferred during surgery, leading to changes in the recipient's personality. I am.

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This theory may sound far-fetched, but the human body is an electrical entity made up entirely of charged particles and governed by electromagnetic principles.

Mitch Riester, a physician and study author, told the Post that two things about the study surprised him and his colleagues.

He noted that the paper did not include other findings.

“Some people only partially completed our survey. In those cases, I called people to see if they needed help completing the study. As I spoke to them over the phone and got to know each other, more personality changes began to emerge that I hadn't revealed in the online survey.

These changes were similar to those described by American neuropsychologist and author Paul Pearsall in 1999, who showed different ways in which heart transplant recipients reflected the personality of their donors.

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One of Pearsall's most notable cases involved a 5-year-old boy who received the heart of a 3-year-old boy.

The recipient said: “I decided to name my boy. He's younger than me, so I call him Timmy. He fell and had an accident. Like me back in the day, he loves Power Rangers so much. I seem to be enjoying them, but now I've lost interest in them.”

The recipient's father revealed that neither his son nor his family initially knew the donor's name or age. Eventually, it turned out that the donor's name was Thomas, but his next of kin called him Tim.

The recipient's mother said it was later discovered that Tim had died after falling off a window ledge while trying to reach for a Power Rangers toy.

Pearsall suggested that memories, or traces of them, may be stored in different parts of the body. Sensitive transplant patients may exhibit personality changes that reflect their organ donor experiences.