<story><title>Memories Can Be Injected and Survive Amputation and Metamorphosis</title><url>http://nautil.us/blog/memories-can-be-injected-and-survive-amputation-and-metamorphosis</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tyri_kai_psomi</author><text>Small aside about memory in humans: I am reminded of a story told during a lecture of a transplant recipient receiving a heart transplant and was interviewed after the successful surgery about what they would like to eat now that they had a new heart (previously, was on a really restricted diet due to heart condition).&lt;p&gt;The person responded with &amp;quot;Kentucky fried chicken&amp;quot; on a whim.&lt;p&gt;It was later explained that they don&amp;#x27;t know why they felt compelled to say KFC since they never been to one in their life. Later on, they find information about the donor and how they died (motorcycle accident -- be safe on your bikes please kids). The donor was a pretty husky guy, and loved Kentucky fried chicken.&lt;p&gt;Now could have this just been sheer coincidence or chance? Most likely. Is this scientifically verifiable? Of course not, not with current means. But for some reason I&amp;#x27;ve always had a strange suspicion that there was more to memory than just storage in our brains, but that they are also somehow part of us as well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jojo2000</author><text>The old vision (brain = neurons =&amp;gt; memories, rest of the body = organs which execute single or multiple functions, synchronized by the brain) is slowly fading away.&lt;p&gt;We have a lot of active neurons in the digestive system, which is in fact a second brain.&lt;p&gt;Same can be said for the heart which contains an autonomous neuronal system to control the cardiac function independently if need be.&lt;p&gt;Notions of distributed systems apply : redundancy, parallelism, coordinated autonomous systems, synchronization.&lt;p&gt;So why wouldn&amp;#x27;t memory storage be distributed too ?&lt;p&gt;Why wouldn&amp;#x27;t some memories stored in organs be retained after transplantation ?</text></comment>
<story><title>Memories Can Be Injected and Survive Amputation and Metamorphosis</title><url>http://nautil.us/blog/memories-can-be-injected-and-survive-amputation-and-metamorphosis</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tyri_kai_psomi</author><text>Small aside about memory in humans: I am reminded of a story told during a lecture of a transplant recipient receiving a heart transplant and was interviewed after the successful surgery about what they would like to eat now that they had a new heart (previously, was on a really restricted diet due to heart condition).&lt;p&gt;The person responded with &amp;quot;Kentucky fried chicken&amp;quot; on a whim.&lt;p&gt;It was later explained that they don&amp;#x27;t know why they felt compelled to say KFC since they never been to one in their life. Later on, they find information about the donor and how they died (motorcycle accident -- be safe on your bikes please kids). The donor was a pretty husky guy, and loved Kentucky fried chicken.&lt;p&gt;Now could have this just been sheer coincidence or chance? Most likely. Is this scientifically verifiable? Of course not, not with current means. But for some reason I&amp;#x27;ve always had a strange suspicion that there was more to memory than just storage in our brains, but that they are also somehow part of us as well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>Acquiring memories and personalities through organ transplants is a somewhat known urban legend and a fiction trope, but AFAIK the only thing you can transmit through a transplant that&amp;#x27;s been verifiably demonstrated is pathogens.</text></comment>