If you ever happen to receive an organ transplant from a donor who played tennis, enjoyed fresh vegetables and reminisced about a high-school sweetheart, then you might find yourself suddenly and inexplicably buying a racket, planting a garden or becoming romantically wistful.
According to a recent study, some organ transplant recipients have reported these kinds of changes in their personalities and preferences. Whether or not they inherited those traits from the organ donors, as some have suggested, remains an open question.
In “Personality Changes Associated with Organ Transplants,” published in January by the peer-reviewed journal Transplantology, a group of six researchers affiliated with the University of Colorado found that a significant majority of both heart and other organ transplant recipients reported changes in temperament, hobbies and more than a dozen other areas.
Furthermore, in a revelation of sorts, the type of organ made no difference.
“The finding of a similar rate of personality changes following both heart and other organ transplants is a new finding,” the researchers wrote. “Previous studies have not compared personality changes in these two categories.”
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Indeed, most previous studies have focused on heart transplants. But more than half of the organ recipients in the Colorado study reported having received a new kidney, liver or lung.
In sum, while the majority of organ recipients described something far short of a wholesale change in their personalities and preferences and while the researchers acknowledged a number of limitations in their methodology, the study nonetheless raised fascinating questions about whether all major organs have some capacity to record, store and even transfer traits generally associated with the brain alone.
The Study
Researchers from the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine, Department of Biology and Department of Psychiatry did what scientists do. They asked questions. Then, after refining those questions and narrowing them to 61 in total, they created an online survey.
A total of 47 organ recipients, most of them recruited via advertising on Facebook, completed the survey. Of these recruits, 23 had received heart transplants and 24 had received other organs, including ten kidney, eight liver and six lung transplants.
The survey’s results proved eye-opening.
For instance, researchers asked survey participants if they had experienced personality or preference changes in any of the following 15 areas: physical attributes, temperament, emotions, food, participating or watching sports, physical activities, personal identity, movies/TV, religious/spiritual beliefs, sexual preferences, memories, art, colors, electronic devices and political views.
As one might expect, 32 of 47 respondents reported physical changes of some kind. But the eye-opening results appeared in the other 14 areas, where a whopping 42 of 47 respondents reported at least one change in personality or preferences.
Furthermore, while a majority reported understandable changes in temperament and emotions, a few respondents claimed to have experienced shifts in preferences or other attributes that have no obvious connection to a transplanted organ.
In fact, researchers received dozens of “yes” answers to questions about interests and beliefs.
Most inexplicable of all, perhaps, seven of the 47 respondents reported changes in memories.
The researchers did acknowledge the study’s limitations. For instance, by advertising for participants in this type of study, they might have introduced selection bias. In other words, these particular respondents might have felt motivated to participate because they had experienced post-transplant changes. Organ recipients who experienced no such changes, on the other hand, might have simply ignored the survey.
The study’s small sample size also precludes grand conclusions.
Nonetheless, the results remain striking.
For one thing, the respondents reported a mean age of 61.9 years old. That is hardly the time of life at which we become less set in our ways.
Likewise, while only four of 47 respondents recalled that they had feared possible personality changes prior to receiving the organ transplant, 18 reported that they had heard of such changes in other organ recipients. And that pre-surgery knowledge requires an explanation.
The Context
The Colorado study did not unveil a new phenomenon. Instead, it added details to a decades-old discussion of organ transplants and personality changes in both popular and scientific literature.
For instance, the researchers noted the famous case of Claire Slyvia.
In 1997, Sylvia and co-author William Novak published “A Change of Heart: A Memoir.”
According to the U.K.’s Independent, Sylvia, a former professional dancer, had received a heart-lung transplant in the United States in 1988 at the age of 47. Months later, “she had a vivid dream about a tall, thin young man whose name was Tim and whose surname began with L.”
Sylvia also developed an appetite for beer and chicken nuggets, as well as a curious attraction to blonde women.
In 1990, she learned the identity of her donor, an 18-year-old motorcycle accident victim from Maine, tracked down his family and discovered that he loved beer and chicken nuggets and “had been restlessly energetic.”
Sylvia died in 2009 at the age of 69. According to The Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Massachusetts, she became the first heart-lung transplant recipient in New England when she received her organs from 18-year-old Tim Lamirande.
“Claire was a great believer in the supernatural and the spiritual, but she also had her two feet firmly on the ground,” a longtime friend recalled.
Scientists, of course, seek natural explanations.
For instance, the Colorado researchers also cited the work of neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall.
In 2002, Pearsall and two other researchers published “Changes in Heart Transplant Recipients That Parallel the Personalities of Their Donors.“
That article, which appeared in the Journal of Near-Death Studies, chronicled the case of a 5-year-old boy who received a heart from a deceased 3-year-old boy. Though the recipient knew nothing about his infant donor or the cause of his death, the 5-year-old suddenly and eerily began describing the deceased boy’s characteristics and interests. The 5-year-old also stopped playing with his Power Ranger toys. It turned out that the 3-year-old had fallen to his death from a window while reaching for that very toy.
The same article also chronicled the case of a 56-year-old college professor who began seeing flashes of light and feeling facial burns only weeks after receiving a heart from a 34-year-old police officer who died after suffering a gunshot to the face.
Interviews with ten transplant recipients, as well as family and friends of recipients and donors, revealed additional parallels. In fact, Pearsall and his fellow researchers reported between two and five parallels in each case.
“We suggest that cellular memory, possibly systemic memory, is a plausible explanation for these parallels,” they wrote.
According to the therapy-focused BetterHelp, the “theory of cellular memory suggests that memories may be stored at a cellular level in individual cells outside of the brain.”
The Colorado researchers also cited cellular memory as a possible cause of post-transplant changes.
“Systemic” memory, of course, calls to mind something larger than a cell.
According to Thomas Jefferson University, scientists have spent decades building on Dr. J. Andrew Armour’s description of the heart as a “little brain.” In other words, the heart, like the brain, has its own independent nervous system.
In a 1985 symposium talk, adapted and published three years later as “The Wisdom of the Receptors: Neuropeptides, the Emotions, and the Bodymind,” Dr. Candace Pert described “an information network within the body” consisting of the chemical substances called neuropeptides and their receptors.
Thus, “It makes more and more sense to speak of a single integrated entity, a ‘bodymind,’” she wrote.
Returning to the Colorado study, does memory, for instance, exist solely in the brain? Does it travel to the heart’s own “little brain” of a nervous system? Or, does it live in the entire “bodymind”?
Takeaways
Definitive answers to the questions raised by organ recipients’ reported experiences do not appear imminent.
The Colorado researchers, for instance, cited the “heart brain” and at least six other theorized causes of post-transplant personality changes.
Those questions, of course, clearly belong in the realm of scientific research.
The broader implications, however, take us far beyond science and into a more important realm. After all, the organ donors were not mere computer codes.
Joan Lamirande, mother of Sylvia’s 18-year-old heart donor, knew that as well as anyone.
“She was a wonderful person,” a tearful Lamirande told The Patriot Ledger after Sylvia’s death. “As long as she was living it was as if my son was still alive. Now that she is gone, I know that my son is gone.”
