If memory can be saved in other organ it can be transmitted in organ transplantation. Are there any case reports about this?
I know that there are some imaginary holly wood movies about this subject.but I wanted to find some scientific papers about this.
thank you.
Hi Mozhgan,
Although far from humans there are some evidences that memory could reside in some other cells in the Planarian flatworms ;) Just thought you could be interested in this :
http://jeb.biologists.org/content/early/2013/06/27/jeb.087809.abstract
Best.
Hi Mozhgan
You could be interested in the following article
http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/StudentJournal/volume2/kate.pdf
Dear Mozhgan,
You asked very GOOD question: "Are there any scientific articles that show the saving of memories in other organs apart from the brain in the human body?"
Yes, regenerating organs, limbs and even organisms (like planaria:http://jeb.biologists.org/content/early/2013/06/27/jeb.087809.abstract) has memory. But there is no well fit theory on it.
You will find an idea (suggestion) to answer your question and may be explaining regeneration and memory phenomenon, but first let me introduce you to novel idea of Russian scientist Dr. Arshavsky Yuriy I. (California) who has suggested that a storage of information (memory) is at the chromatin (a complex of DNA with proteins and other molecules).
It is like a hard-drive that saves information. So, any reformatting of such "hard-drive" (or destroying it) causes information loss (or partial block). The memory is gone. That is a key stone. He applied his hypothesis first for human brain neurons and published articles on Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and memory lost. The idea is that when blood-brain-barrier started to be leaky (AD case), the macrophages enter the brain fighting such newly made memory-proteins and destroy these proteins at the chromatin.
So, related to your question one can say: if the chromatin is everywhere, any transplanted organ has chromatin and can transfer own "memory" from the donor to the recipient. The problem is that "memory-proteins" wiring to chromatin are the targets for immune system of the recipient. Thus, immunosystem should (and usually is) depressed chemically in clinic where an organ is transplanted. Therefore, when immunosystem is blocked by immunodepressants, the donor organ is alive, the recipient is alive too as well as donor-memory.
Therefore, the memory from donors is saved(!) and consequently a recipient could remember life of a donor. That is what usually have been described by recipients after post-surgery (they change taste, image processing and finally match life experience of a donor). There are many references of the donor-like-phantoms.
Please, check Arshavsky's articles. For example, Arshavsky YI. (2014) "Alzheimer disease and cellular mechanisms of memory storage". Neuropathol Exp Neurol. 73(3):192-205.
I have to suggest three critical points:
(1) normal brain as postulated is not leaky and has good BBB, however it is not true, the macrophages, steam cells and cancer cells enter the brain constantly;
(2) the brain contains two cell types: neurons and glia, so the chromatin is in both compartments. There is growing evidence that glial cells are involved in memory formation;
(3) chromatin is packed by polyamines (PA) which are accumulated in glial cells rather than in neurons (Laube and Veh, 1997, Biedermann, Skatchkov et al, 1998; Skatchkov et al., 2000). So, "hard-drive" is formed by a triplet: DNA-PA-proteins. There are publications showing that memory loss is related to PA loss and alternatively PA level determine memory improvement. Look for example her: http://www.ru.nl/english/@914497/pagina/
Even it is not related to your question, it can help you understanding )
Cordially , Serguei.
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