Personality transplants?

sleepy

Theres a report in the Mail on Sunday that states "New study shows how organ patients can take on traits of donors"
It goes on to report on a scientific study were people who recieved organs from dead people took on traits they nether had before but were traits of the donor.
"The doctors say that one explaination is that memory and learning is not restricted to the brain, and that other cells in the body have the ability to store information-so called cellular memory"

Some examples are woman with heart lung transpant develops cravings for food she previously didn't like but donor did, 29 year old woman goes from gay to stright after having heart of teenage girl , 47 year old woman develops a giggle the same as 14 year old she recieved heart from.

Now i don't know whether there findings are valid or not but if true I wonder whether Jw will go back to beleiving the Heart is the center of your personnality.

Anyway there could be another explaination for this.
Maybe the stucture of our organs causes our body to need or desire different things.So the desire is not actually in the organ but the organs stucture puts different demands on the body for nutriants etc, which in turn effect the brain and you desires.

Mindchild

It doesn't surprise me to see this type of sensationalism raise its ugly head again. Many newspapers and other media sources don't either have the time or skills to actually judge the validity of studies and when you consider the tremendous amount of spin and propaganda that we are swimming neck deep in these days, well the next thing you know we will be hearing along these lines is that demonz inhabit transplanted body parts.

Even if such a story had some basis in fact, it wouldn't take much to see that people have such immense powers of self deception that they believe something to be true regardless of the facts. For example, if you look at documented investigations of people who claim to speak in tongues (foreign languages that they did not know) quite offen their language is nothing but jibberish or they on a few occassions have tapped into an old childhood memory of something they heard in another language that they didn't understand, and just repeated it. Kind of like a radio broadcast from the past with no relevant application or information to the present. Heck, some people are absolutely convinced they have been abducted and sexually experimented with by aliens and give great detail to their stories.

Just goes to show then that the emotional trauma of their situation (getting the surgery and transplant) could be playing huge tricks with their mind.

Skipper

P.S. I did not write this post. A transplanted right finger is responsible for all this content. I refuse to take responsiblity for giving you the finger. lol

Focus

Thanks for the laugh... As you doubtless realize, sensationalist newspapers print all sorts of "schtuff"; they are paid by the page, and not according to what is on the page. I am sure the studies exist as I have read extracts from one of them... they do not point to the sensationalist results implied by the newspaper.

Here is a little light-hearted "test". Click on:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_epq=cellular%20memory&as_scoring=d
and see the newsgroups where this was discussed most often (the first three being the main ones):

alt.alien.visitors
alt.alien.research
alt.paranet.ufo alt.religion.scientology
alt.clearing.technology (Scientology too)
alt.conspiracy
alt.paranormal.crop-circles
alt.hypnosis
alt.spirituality.circle
alt.religion.asatru
alt.paranormal
alt.ufo
alt.illuminati
alt.society.neutopia
alt.alien.wanderers
alt.religion.asatru
alt.society.neutopia
alt.out-of-body
alt.consciousness.4th-way
alt.philosophy.taoism
alt.games.vampire.the.masquerade
alt.paranormal.reincarnation
alt.tv.x-files.creative
alt.fan.dune
alt.meditation.transcendental
alt.comedy.standup
alt.freemasonry
etc.

Not really the "serious" scientific, medical and psychological groups (hardly any references there) which would be absolutely awash with people talking about "cellular memory" had the studies actually concluded what the newspaper implies they did...

Even if one restricts the searching to very recent times, there is no marked difference in profile.

Clearly, cellular ""memory"" of a sort does exist. But, there is no evidence that it supports any of the earlier jW beliefs about personality transplants. If any is forthcoming, let us review it when it does.

Note also that if a kook believes in a thousand kooky things (as has the Watchtower) , a few of them are bound to turn out to have some truth behind them as knowledge develops. For it to be otherwise would require real skill on the part of the kook to manage to avoid the ones that did turn out to be partly correct...

--
Focus
(Rational Class)

Erich

mindchild:

Sorry I must say this your posting is nonsense.

Information is stored in ALL parts of the body that contains CNS-neuronal cells and synapses. Thats not only the brain. There are CNS-synapses in all types of organs and body-parts having axons or dentrites connected via spinal canal to the brain..

Besides, informations are additionally stored in all sorts of muscles and myoid structures (moto axons etc.)

This my writing is basing on official state of scientific knowledge in neurophysiology.
You can proof it by yourself, if you want. Study a book about neurophysiology carefully, and you'll have the proof.

sleepy

I wasn't saying the newspaper was right by the way just quoting them.

Some of the research i have done would tend to agree with Erich though.
Memory remmeber is not just visual or fact related.Your muscles have a type of memory also you feel emotions in your gut because of cells that exist there and send mesages to your brain.

If you think of it though there is no conceptual reason why the brain should be the only centre of memory in our body.
Were does the brain end and the body start?
I belive we are more complex than that and we should not view our body as seperate from the brain , but that it is all part of a intricate system.

Erich

sleepy.

yes, you have quite right.

There is another interesting effect that scientists are studying currently (formerly, they ignored that effect totally).
It's the phenomemon, that obviously in biological structures VERY LITTLE SOURCES are to CAUSE VERY GREAT IMPACTS.

E.g. see hormone system, immune system, transmitter substances, enzyms and so on. The homeopatic medicin is using this phenomenon to treat people in a soft manner.

A similar phenomenon is e.g. the well-known "GRANDER"-system for "magnetic-stimulated" water cleaning in swimming pools, ponds etc.
(An almost un-researched miracle...) But works indeed!

ISP

I find it hard to believe that organs could affect personalities etc. Erich can you post some links to any stuff that would support your view.

ISP

hippikon

Whats up doc

I got a kidney from bugs bunny and it hasn't affect me at all

Thhhhhhhh ats all folks

Mindchild

lol @ Erich when he said...

This my writing is basing on official state of scientific knowledge in neurophysiology. You can proof it by yourself, if you want. Study a book about neurophysiology carefully, and you'll have the proof.

Well it just so happens to be that I have a business that deals with college textbooks and I can find no cases of neuron-based information being stored through out the body in any of the college level books on neuroanatomy or neuropsychology. Our nervous system is actually part of our brain and does extend through our body and does send information to our brain, but the extended neural network does not itself process information in any sense of the word that gives it capablity of "thinking". We do have reflexes but when you tap my knee sharply, there is not an exchange of information being processed between neurons deciding should I swing my leg or not today.

If you look further the topic is about organ transplants, not neural transplants anyway. Do you really believe the nonsense that different organs in your body have "personality?" Even the Watchtower reluctantly changed their stance years ago when faced with massive evidence that the heart could not think nor effect behvioral changes when transplanted in other bodies. Or did you see this new light? Maybe something was lost in the language translation here, but if you have knowledge of peer reviewed scientific studies with references that show organs hold information and which can cause personality changes due to transplantation from causes other than a patients own self delusion please post them. I would be delighted to see this break through in scientific thinking. I seriously doubt if you have such information though.

Skipper

Personality transplants?

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