Article Can an organ transplant really change someone’s personality?

[C C]

https://theconversation.com/can-an-organ...ity-228923

INTRO: Changes in personality following a heart transplant have been noted pretty much ever since transplants began. In one case, a person who hated classical music developed a passion for the genre after receiving a musician’s heart. The recipient later died holding a violin case.

In another case, a 45-year-old man remarked how, since receiving the heart of a 17-year-old boy, he loves to put on headphones and listen to loud music – something he had never done before the transplant.

A recent study suggests that heart transplant recipients may not be unique in experiencing personality changes. These changes can occur following the transplantation of any organ.

What might explain this? One suggestion could be that this is a placebo effect where the overwhelming joy of receiving a new lease on life gives the person a sunnier disposition. Other transplant recipients suffer from guilt and bouts of depression and other psychological issues that might also be seen as personality changes.

However, there is some evidence to suggest that these personality changes aren’t all psychological. Biology may play a role, too... (MORE - details)

[Syne]

Large personality changes are known to happen following any surgery.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...ed-effects
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8783491/

So this result for organ transplants may not have been sufficiently isolated from other post-op personality changes.

[Zinjanthropos]

If anyone is under anaesthetic, do they still hear conversation in an operating theatre? If this the case for transplant surgery then I can imagine doctors and OR staff talking about the donor and things they might be aware of in the donor’s life. Perhaps suggestive to the non conscious patient?

[Syne]

Considering many surgeons listen to music during operations, the cases of classical and loud music would seem to hint at some subconscious suggestibility.

[C C]

Some originally tried to explain this with James V. McConnell's old chemical memory transfer hypothesis. Which once seemed discredited, but apparently still lingers around slightly due to supposed later research keeping it on tenuous life support. Larry Niven recruited the idea in his 1976 novel A World Out of Time. 

I see a newer paper (at bottom) has added to McConnell's RNA basis with several other avenues, for the express purpose of this kind of subject. 

If some of the wilder stories about transplant patients and their particularly isolated conditions were actually true -- or skeptics can't fully undermine the credibility of those accounts -- then this stuff and that questionable theory would be locked in a weird relationship of reciprocally trying to save each other from going under.

One or the other or both needs to be fully debunked once and for all, otherwise both forms of "craziness" (transplant tales and non-neural memory conveyance) may dawdle around for decades to come in this vague arena of "semi-acceptability".

Personality changes following heart transplantation: The role of cellular memory
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31739081/

ABSTRACT: Personality changes following heart transplantation, which have been reported for decades, include accounts of recipients acquiring the personality characteristics of their donor. Four categories of personality changes are discussed in this article: (1) changes in preferences, (2) alterations in emotions/temperament, (3) modifications of identity, and (4) memories from the donor's life. The acquisition of donor personality characteristics by recipients following heart transplantation is hypothesized to occur via the transfer of cellular memory, and four types of cellular memory are presented: (1) epigenetic memory, (2) DNA memory, (3) RNA memory, and (4) protein memory. Other possibilities, such as the transfer of memory via intracardiac neurological memory and energetic memory, are discussed as well. Implications for the future of heart transplantation are explored including the importance of reexamining our current definition of death, studying how the transfer of memories might affect the integration of a donated heart, determining whether memories can be transferred via the transplantation of other organs, and investigating which types of information can be transferred via heart transplantation. Further research is recommended.

[Magical Realist]

One or the other or both needs to be fully debunked once and for all, otherwise both forms of "craziness" (transplant tales and non-neural memory conveyance) may dawdle around for decades to come in this vague arena of "semi-acceptability".

Good lord! We can't have anything like an unexplained phenomenon floating around in the medical science field, much less a theory to actually explain it. "Must...debunk...fully..."

https://theconversation.com/can-an-organ...o%20normal.

[Syne]

Looks like that chemical memory theory is attempting, however misguidedly, to give the phenomenon a physical basis. The problem is that the science is vastly more questionable than even the debunked chemical imbalance theory of mental illness.

Both are far more parsimoniously explained by subconscious suggestion/trauma. You don't have to postulate any relatively magical abilities of simple physical properties, and you only have to presume that the subconscious works the way we already know it does.