Transplant memory - a related phenomenon?

[David Bailey]

Now that there are many people alive and well after receiving a heart transplant, there are some strange reports that sometimes some of the memories of the donor get transplanted too! For example,

The Book Of THoTH - ESP & PSI - Transplant Memory?

Some time ago, there was a program devoted to this phenomenon on UK TV. A few scientists supported the idea - pointing out that there is considerable nervous tissue in the heart - while others were skeptics.

Obviously, it must be hard to overestimate the change for someone when they wake up with a new, well functioning heart, after years (or even a whole lifetime) of disability. However, it would seem that sometimes very specific memories are transferred - such as a love of classical music. One lady described how she was chatting with friends as she recovered and said "Oh I do want to get out of here and have a beer". She had never previously enjoyed beer, but her donor had!

I do hope Joki will reply to this - because it is obviously in his area of expertise.

The aspect of this that I find fascinating is the transference of memories. The usual scientific explanation for memory is that they are stored in neural nets - the connections between neurons gradually adjust in response to repeated inputs, until a particular idea is stored. However, as I understand it, this is a statistical process, and you would not expect such a neural memory to make sense inside someone else's body. The fact that whole memories and like/dislikes of specific things can get passed this way seems to break the conventional 'understanding' of these matters.

David

[mcromer]

The entire notion that memory is "stored" physically is one of those foundational notions of materialism with a great deal of evidence against it.

In this case, it seems quite likely that having a living donor heart makes it possible for both sets of memories to be "tuned in".

[Mike]

Matthew,

I know that people who suggest the memories are not stored in the brain sometimes refer to the brain as a "tuning device" which tunes into the memories similar to the way a radio tunes into various radio broadcasts. Do you know of anyone who has attempted to explain exactly how the brain does its tuning? That of course leads to the question of how heart tissue in a transplanted heart tunes into the memories and personality traits of the donor and how the person receiving the transplanted heart becomes conscious of the memories.

Also, if we say for a moment that there is something to psychometry, then there must be something about the physical object which enables a sensitive to tune into information about the person associated with that object.

[David Bailey]

I am not sure the 'tuning device' analogy works here. As I understand it, the recipients do not get access to the whole of the donors memories and preferences - just a random few!

David

[Mike]

David,

Then the question remains, just exactly how and why do they get access to those random few. Also, I've read that not all transplant cases involve such memory transfer. If that is the case, I wonder why it is.

[Mike]

Does anyone have any ideas as to how scientists can move forward in studying these phenomena and developing theories to account for them? One criticism leveled by skeptics is that people studying alleged paranormal phenomena never seem to be able to come up with credible theories that link the alleged phenomena to the larger edifice of scientific theory.

[David Bailey]

This seems to be a bit like NDE's - somehow almost paranormal, nut not quite!

If paranormal phenomena generally are shown to be real, I think a model in which traditional material concepts represent some sort of limit when spiritual (not sure what word to use here) forces are not operating. There are lots of examples of this in existing science - Newton's laws are valid in the limit when things are moving slowly and the masses involved are not too small and not too great.

However, I feel it is important to evaluate the evidence for ψ before worrying too much about interpretation - otherwise people just try to explain phenomena with existing science, fail, and then discard the evidence!

Does anyone feel that my neural net argument is flawed - i.e. could this be a phenomenon that can be explained traditionally?

As regards Mike's point that not every recipient observes this effect - well surely that is true of medicine generally - drug side-effects and disease symptoms, they all vary from patient to patient!

I hope Joki contributes to this!

David

[pacificwhim]

Mike, there are two fallacies associated with your last post. First of all, a field or study or a phenomenon does not need a theoretical underpinning to make it valid. It's preferable, of course, but just because no one has been able--yet--to develop a reliable predictive theory about psi and such phenomena as memory transplantation does not mean the evidence can be dismissed, as the Skeptics would prefer (note the capitalization; Topher, I think you've created a meme!). Also note that some scientists are working on theories that would explain psi, but it's, pardon the pun, an inexact science.

The other fallacy is the idea that a theory of psi has to fit in with current scientific knowledge about how the universe works. That's of course a favorite Skeptical tactic, to claim that psi can't work based on our current knowledge of the cosmos so therefore it must be illusory. Nonsense. Never mind that our "standard model" is always changing and must change as science reveals new realities. Since when does a field have to fit the accepted model to be valid? To explain his observations about light and velocity, Einstein didn't try to make them fit into Newtonian classical physics; he upended the entire applecart and created a new set of laws that passed predictive testing.

I haven't read enough on Einstein to know if there was as much vehement resistance in his day to relativity as there is today to psi, but I suspect there were many people angry that he was "daring" to question the "way things are." I'll wager that psi will require the same kind of paradigm-shattering theory to explain it.

[Topher Cooper]

One criticism leveled by skeptics is that people studying alleged paranormal phenomena never seem to be able to come up with credible theories that link the alleged phenomena to the larger edifice of scientific theory.

Yes, but note that another criticism leveled by Skeptics against theorizing is that any theories attempting to link the phenomena "to the larger edifice of scientific theory" are worthless and without foundation since the phenomena in question have not been demonstrated to exist.

Catch-22: you must have firm experimental evidence in hand before any theories can be taken as series, but you must have serious, accepted theories in hand before the experimental evidence can be considered firm.

Personally I would love to see a credible theory that I'm really comfortable with, but in the meantime experimental evidence that thoroughly falsifies the conventional assumptions should be taken seriously.

[Topher Cooper]

Does anyone feel that my neural net argument is flawed - i.e. could this be a phenomenon that can be explained traditionally?

I don't think that your heart neuron theory will do it. Intrinsic to the neural net theory of memory is that the neural net be tightly integrated with the whole brain network, not sitting out on the periphery connected by individual motor and sensory nerves. It is true that the heart has its own neural network, but this is a pretty small and simple network of motor neurons that creates the heart's built-in pacemaker. If somehow they carried some memory that memory would not be available to the brain -- the connection from heart to brain is much smaller than what is left connecting the two brain hemispheres when the Corpus Callosum is severed and that pretty thoroughly eliminates memory transfer between the two hemispheres.