A Medical Mystery: Transferred Organ Donor Consciousness
Published by Many recipients of organ transplants, (hearts/lungs, liver, kidney) have reported significant personality changes – which in many cases, correspond to the traits of the organ donor.
Could the donor’s personality, memories or consciousness remain within their tissue cells and be passed on to another human being?
Transplant surgery only began to be developed in the 1970’s, so it is a relatively new technique.
Medical Science
It cannot be disputed that medical science has made tremendous advances in understanding and treating the human body.
Over the past few hundred years, continued research, technology, diagnosis and treatment, coupled with the development of preventative vaccinations, have almost doubled the average human life expectancy.
But medical science cannot claim definitive knowledge in every field, and each discovery or breakthrough gives rise to further questions.
Despite all the amazing medical success stories, if you consider the common everyday illnesses, it becomes clear that much about the human body and its afflictions remain a mystery to medical science. For example, there is still no cure for the common cold, and the cause and cure for many types of headache and migraine are unclear.
Research is ongoing, but is wholly dependent upon funding, which is simply not available for every field of medicine.
Where is Consciousness?
Many scientific papers assume that the seat of consciousness – the self, personality or soul – is located in the brain, along with short- and long-term memory.
Evidence is collated by scientific observation of patients, who lose memory or specific personality traits as a consequence of localized brain trauma.
However, more recent studies have observed that neural cells are found not only in the brain, but also in the heart. In fact, 65% of all heart cells are neural cells. The heart’s function cannot therefore be classified as merely a pump. The heart communicates with the brain and every other major organ in the body biochemically, with the production of the hormone ANF – Atrial Natriuretic Factor.
Potentially, therefore, consciousness could be seated within the heart or any other major organ.
Moving Toward Consciousness
Some scientists have proposed a theory of Cell Memory, in which memory and consciousness are stored within every cell in the human body.
Others theorize that consciousness is external to the body, and is seated within the electromagnetic field within and surrounding every human. In this theory, neural cells are merely the transmitter and interpreter for the consciousness.
Liked it
On August 17, 2008 at 8:39 am
I’m not sure what I think about it, but it is very interesting.
On August 19, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I really enjoyed this, though I have a hard time believing it’s not science-fiction. Who could imagine that our organs have theor own memories?
On October 2, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Wow..this is fascinating to me..I have always wondered about these subject..Very interesting read!
On October 20, 2008 at 11:12 am
Very interesting article! I like the one about the man who hunted down the family of his donor and fell in love with his donor’s widow and married her. That would make a great romance novel! Only I would give it a happy ending not have him shoot himself.
On November 19, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Makes sence to me. Thats why after we die and begin our new life in Christ our bodies will be returned to us. We will reconfigure all of our eliments back together by call them to come to us.
Daniel
On November 19, 2008 at 2:56 pm
the ancient greeks believed that the heart was the seat of thought; the brain was merely an organ for cooling the blood. i would be inerested to know if there are any categories in this phenomenon; eg, the girl who changed her blood type after transplant may perhaps be experiencing a different thing from the more emotional/aesthetic/psychic implications of many of these anecdotes (and the prural of anecdotes, to quote ben goldacre, is not data. the chinese study sound invaluable; it will quickly tell us if we have a measurable phenomenon here or not, assuming it’s done properly. and why organs specifically? could we find this experience in anyone who has had a blood transfusion from a single donor? curious business.
noel
On November 20, 2008 at 1:50 pm
I once read an SF story called “The Assemblage of Kristin,” where a group of young men and women received organs from the same young woman – a heart, ears, an eye, a hand, tongue, skin, even genitalia….Kristin’s mother pleads for the recipients to come together once a month and make her daughter alive again because their donor body parts “remember” what the real Kristin did while alive. For esample, Kristin liked a certain movie star so the recipient would force herself to watch a movie with that star in it!
On November 20, 2008 at 5:01 pm
May 7th 1983 was a very sad day for us as our 16 year old second son committed suicide . He had been diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatiod Arthritis at the age of 10 in his loving letter to us he stated he was tired of all the pain and that we should give his organs to someone that could use them. His 2 kidneys and 2 iris’s were given as in 1983 that was all they took. About 8 days after he died the hospital had a service at the chapel and my Mom and I went as we came down the hall I had the feeling of Clayton so over whelming I had goosebumps on my body. We went down another hall way and it was to much the sense of Clayton being near… made me shake all over . My Mom asked me, what was the matter, there was an older gentlemen in a wheelchair by the exit door and I said that that man was connected to Clayton and as we walked by him I looked and his left eye had a patch on it…..That happened 25 years ago and I have not got the feeling that Clayton is at rest because he is not dead . It is a extremely uncomforting feeling….I WOULD NEVER ALLOW ANY ORGANS TO BE TAKEN AGAIN. You are right there is a life in the tiny atoms of our bodies. Judge me if you want– but , we all have a time to live and a time to die………Mother of Clayton Anthony Street a loving caring kid……
On November 21, 2008 at 5:01 am
They are able to convict a man based SOLELY on the evidence of an 8-year-old’s vivid dreams? Hopefully that’s a media exaggeration or that legal system is seriously in need of a tune-up.
On November 24, 2008 at 8:30 am
Amazing facts! I was a nurse in theatre on one of the first transplants in the UK in the ’70s, it was a strange feeling, very sad but uplifting to know someone was going to live as well. Great article, you have a new fan!
On November 27, 2008 at 8:01 am
Again you’ve obviously looked into this very deeply to put such a strong case forward
On December 7, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I watched an old disney channel show, So Weird. One of the last episodes in season 2 was about this subject. After watching the episode, i got curious and decided to reasearch a little bit. Very interesting.
On December 12, 2008 at 1:07 am
I have had a liver transplant for 2 years, and i experience the same concious life that I did before. Sounds like the old phenomenom of possession in the reports of these people. Maybe fantasy prone. The mind-body is the vessel of the soul, but memories are stored in the brain. Hense amnesia.
On February 17, 2009 at 9:54 am
There is a simple explanation as to why this phenomenon exists, and what probably causes it. The clue is rhat it only occurs in some patients, and only seems to happen in cases when the donor has died.
To my great surprise (and I must admit, dismay)I recently discovered – accidentally – that I am clairvoyant. Being a scientist by education and trainig, and a cynical, demanding fellow by nature, I ‘demanded proof’ that this was a real ability, as opposed to some mental malfunction or elaborate joke – that proof was provided, many times by now.
The medical profession officially classifies conciousness, memory and intelligence as neurological phenomena, which die and decay with the body when physical life expires. The ‘good news’ for anyone unsure, is that death is not the end of existence, we all continue to ‘live’ in another state, in a condition and ‘place’ normally unseen and undetectable to most people.
This is not some religious argument requieing ‘faith’, it is a fact of nature and existence, which has been demonstrated and ‘proven’ to be true countless times… even on TV nowadays. I don’t need to say any more, just assure everyone that’s the way it is and has probably always been – how or why it ‘works’ is beyond me, it just does!
I strongly suspect that this ‘transplant’ phenomena is not caused by any mysterious, undiscovered medical or biological condition, but by a psychic link between the patient and the spirit of the deceased donor. If you examine the facts of cases carefully, and compare the experiences, feelings and descriptions given by orhan recipients, they are remarkably similar to those described by psychics and mediums, when first discovering their abilities.
Its a complicated subject, but I am pretty sure this is the cause. Many people – maybe all? – have the ability to communicate so, without ever realising it. What is required to initiate and discover it is an unusual open-ness of the mind, and a strong connection to someone in the ’spirit world’… I can think of no stronger way of connecting than having their heart inside you! Note the patients almost invariable wish to meet the relatives of their donor, and thank them. They are not ‘possesed’ of course, merely connected – an entirely natural phenomena, which in time will become as accepted a ’scientific fact’ as radio waves, electricity and other invisible, unseen physical phenomena.
On April 4, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Dude, howabout citing some sources?
On January 18, 2010 at 6:43 pm
It has recently (in last 10 or so years) been shown that we have both a cardiac brain (approx. 40,000 neurons) and an enteric [gut] brain (approx. 100 Million neurons). These large chunks of neural tissue apparently constitute functional brains in their own right and communicate via the vagus nerve to the head brain.
It is highly possible that when a heart/lung transplant occurs, that after some months, the brain in the transplanted organ begins to reconnect and send signals to the nervous system. It’s also possible that the heart brain may communicate via hormones, cytokines and other messenger molecules.
This may help explain why in certain cases, where some sort of connection has managed to occur via neurogenesis, there is evidence of emerging donor personality traits and memories.
Indeed, we know from folk wisdom, that the heart is the seat of values, appreciation and a certain level of intelligence. So the heart brain may well be a key component controlling and mediating preferences and desires.
On June 12, 2010 at 5:48 pm
This is an interesting subject, but I notice that the same examples are given on different sites. With the number of organ transplants out there, one might expect a wider array of such cases.
Does some thinking take place outside of the brain? Absolutely. Even in blind people, eye movement is part of the process for understanding the layout of a room. A blind man who had his eyes removed for glass prosthetics said he felt like he had gone blind all over again. There are other examples.
Is there such a thing as cell memory? Well, yes, the cells learn to communicate with each other, to understand what role they play in the larger body, etc., and they do have a form of biochemical memory, but this is a far cry from remembering a favorite musician in some corner of the heart’s atrium.
My guess is that if such a phenomenon does exist, then likely all of the explanations mentioned in the article are false. The modernist scientists miss it because of their reductionism, and the various postmodern explanations miss it for lack of sound reasoning.
My explanation? I don’t have one. First, I need to see more examples. If I had to take a wild guess, I might opt for the spiritual connection.
On August 25, 2010 at 11:33 pm
I am a massage therapist with many years of experience behind me. There is such thing and muscular and cellular memory. When we work on our patients, sometimes they have emotional reactions that don’t seem to be explainable. I’ll explain it like this – say you were in a scary situation and in that situation you tensed your muscles in a certain way. When as a therapist I go into one of those muscles and help to release that tension the memory of that incident may surface. Just like smells trigger certain memories. There is a proven scientific reason for that.
On November 21, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Can you site any sources? I would like to do more research on this topic, its so fascinating.
On January 17, 2012 at 3:27 pm
Listen carefully, I’ve spent almost of my life among scientific Books, I know how the others think and their level of thinking, almost I’ve wrote came true later through many scientists researchs, the other still too early for them, I wrote this in 1996, read carefully,
Evolution: it goes without saying, anybody has any suspicion should read more, But the Question is what’s behind it except Genes? gene is not intelligent entity, so how does evolution work? behind genes is one of the most advanced coding systems in this universe its kind of energy “intelligent form its long story, the secret of perception, cognition,,,” anyhow life is not easy at all, mankind’s knowledge still very weak and needs to be rebuild, like psychology is full of mistakes, whats behind evolution is strange kind of energy, its you “self-concept” you’re using perception unit right now, to transfer it to recognition unit, this self-concept is strange kind of energy its behind Evolution, some people doesn’t like this, these psychological characters are built in, some built in characters are good to protect Mankind, but some of it are not good for mankind progress, the silly thing is self-concept “you” refuses this fact itself,
we didn’t open the gate of science yet, we need a real scientists, we should change our way of thinking about Time, speed concept, look to almost physics equations from Newton’s Laws to Relativity and Quantum Laws, We ignoring the main Rule of Speed-Time, Mass-Energy, we’ve to revise our way of thinking about time-speed concept.
about Evolution: look to this: A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated or missing limb (even an organ, like the appendix) is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts,,, self-concept has the infinitesimal details of whole human body Energy state “she built it”, that’s why, its data still exist in our brain,
precognition related to time concept too,,,,,
everything in this universe is Govern by Science, in future this will be the most important Field in science “self-concept energy”, you can apply this on other beings, time to small beings is different, that’s why it evolute more speedy “like insects”, Human being needs his brain too, some simple people wants to live for ever! mankind lives for ever through his progeny, human transfer “self-concept” to his children unknowingly and unwillingly what a shame! that’s why we should take care of our progeny, Democracy and Humanity aren’t luxury, during Crisis they could rely on them to rebuild there society in short time, else any society full thieves, bribers, telltales, pimps,hypocrisy,,, could destroy them any time, whats really strange is some ignorant thieves and bribees,,,, talking about civilization!
I think there is a problem with human mind, they are living like irrational animals!!!
the problem we still don’t understand ourselves, forget about Psychology its full of mistake, they are simple people needs help too its not science its kind of pseudo-science…
we’ve to find good way to connect all exact sciences to work in good way, because some sophisticated problems need all these together to solve it.
lets go to the point:
the silly thing is that human spirit “its one of the advanced coding systems in this universe” refuses it’s existing itself, its you (self-concept) you are using Ur perception unit right now to read this text, you’re seeing text inside Ur temporary memory “its part of Ur perception unit” , when you sleep, or coma, or disconnect for physiological reasons,,, you just disconnect perception unit, when you want to wake up you’ve to make new connection with Ur perception unit, you “self-concept” using Ur perception unit to recognize this inner and outer world, our spirit is repository of permanent memory and emotions, and responsible for the vital processes of our body like immune system,,,, the other silly thing is inside our spirit there are built in scientist of genetics, physics, maths,,,, our spirit works the fundamental of subatomic particles where the concept of time has differ meaning, we just rediscover it, I can’t talk in details this needs a book,
you talk about psychology, it’s not science at all, I don’t talk about Behavioral Psychology, it goes without saying, but the Basics of Psychology itself, (Mental life: conscious mind, unconscious mind,,, id, ego, superego,,,), these reflects the absurdity of some people! Mankind even still doesn’t get it, themselves!
do you know the secret of some kind of supernatural, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, sixth sense,,, its Spirit+Time, we’ve to change our way of thinking, specially about Time concept,