> Every memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain
Maybe. But the brain is not the only place where memory is stored. Flat worms remember things (and skills!) after their head has been cut off and they regrew it:
"Every memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain. A discovery that helped explain those changes has earned neuroscientist Oswald Steward one of science’s highest honors.
Steward received the 2026 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, a USD 1 million award and one of science’s most prestigious awards, for research that transformed scientists’ understanding of how the brain learns and stores memories."
And that's what it took. One comment on hackernews and the prize was retracted. HN at its best! ;)
Well, it does seem that memories may be embedded in the nervous system as well as the brain, so I don’t think the OP is wrong. You sometimes hear of heart transplant patients having other people’s memories / preferences. So, it’s not good evidence, but it’s a possibility.
> Personality changes have been reported following organ transplantation. Most commonly, such changes have been described among heart transplant recipients. [...] A cross-sectional study was conducted in which 47 participants (23 heart recipients and 24 other organ recipients) completed an online survey. In this study, 89% of all transplant recipients reported personality changes after undergoing transplant surgery, which was similar for heart and other organ recipients.
Who knows the cause though, could be anything I suppose, not necessarily that "memory sits in tissue".
It's massive, hugely traumatic surgery, taking the patient past what was considered the point of death a century ago, bringing them back alive, and all with the aid of some of the most powerful drugs in modern medicine's arsenal.
And if your heart is needing transplantation in the first place, you'll be running far below optimal for blood O2 and a dozen other things.
It'd be more surprising if it didn't result in significant change.
Just 47 participants in the online study and a wide variety of psychological issues: “depression, anxiety, psychosis, and sexual dysfunction.”. A few of them found religion.
Is anyone surprised that surviving traumatic surgery with a long debilitating recovery time causes mental stress?
> Is anyone surprised that surviving traumatic surgery with a long debilitating recovery time causes mental stress?
No, but some of the references reports and studies (referenced in the above study), if truthful, would be too much of a coincidence, no?
> a heart and lung transplant at Yale-New Haven hospital in 1988. Following surgery, Sylvia developed a new taste for green peppers and chicken nuggets, foods she previously disliked. As soon as she was released from the hospital, she promptly headed to a Kentucky Fried Chicken to order chicken nuggets. She later met her donor’s family and inquired about his affinity for green peppers. Their response was, “Are you kidding? He loved them… But what he really loved was chicken nuggets”
> a 5-year-old boy received the heart of a 3-year-old boy but was not informed about his donor’s age or cause of death. Despite this lack of information, he provided a vivid description of his donor after the surgery: “He’s just a little kid. He’s a little brother like about half my age. He got hurt bad when he fell down. He likes Power Rangers a lot I think, just like I used to. I don’t like them anymore though” (p. 70, [8]). Subsequently it was reported that his donor had died after falling from an apartment window while trying to reach a Power Ranger toy that had fallen onto the window ledge. After receiving his new heart, the recipient refused to touch or play with Power Rangers
I'm sure there might be other explanations to all of these, but at least people are trying to study it more.
Flatworms branched off our side of the animal tree of life very early on. They're on the same side as molluscs, some of whom (cephalopods) are famous for having a more distributed nervous system.
Granted though many/most organs are stateful and somewhat adaptive - in a sense they'll "remember" what happened. Even plants possess that to varying degrees.
That's interesting, but bear in mind that sensory neurons are basically just transducers that sense something and convert it into a neural output. It makes sense that a woman's brain would find it useful to know when she is ovulating.
AFAIK the gut in large terrestrial vertebrates has its own nervous system that rivals the complexity of the entire system in simpler creatures.
The idea that all stateful/regulatory stuff is entirely localised to the brain is a bit too simple to be true. Most of it, sure, but that last few percent can be doing all sorts of clinically important stuff. Nature is an incredibly brilliant engineer, but not always a tidy one.
“A memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain” as truth statement is a basic fallacy of naive physicalism. There is no falsifiable way to ascertain in which direction causality points, nor is natural science even intended provide a definitive answer—it is designed to make predictions and any models that arise in the process are necessarily faulty and do not describe the true nature of underlying reality, which this ultimately comes down to.
Steward received the 2026 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, a USD 1 million award and one of science’s most prestigious awards, for research that transformed scientists’ understanding of how the brain learns and stores memories."
And that's what it took. One comment on hackernews and the prize was retracted. HN at its best! ;)