A certain level of evidence in human and animal studies employing organ transplantation techniques has indicated that this type of “memory” resides in each organ and could be transferrable, erasable, and rewritable, which is similar to neuronal and immune “memory”.
Body memory (BM) is a hypothesis that the body itself is capable of storing memories, as opposed to only the brain. While experiments have demonstrated the possibility of cellular memory there are currently no known means by which tissues other than the brain would be capable of storing memories.
While seemingly rare, It's not an unheard-of phenomenon. Some researchers believe it may be possible for donor organs to hold and even pass on the characteristics and experiences of its original owner onto the new recipient, via a process known as cellular memory.
Cardiac neurological memory
The heart has two distinct networks of nerves, one consisting of nerve cells within the heart and the other made up of nerves originating outside the heart. Both networks have the potential to encode, store, and retrieve memories.
For explicit memories – which are about events that happened to you (episodic), as well as general facts and information (semantic) – there are three important areas of the brain: the hippocampus, the neocortex and the amygdala. Implicit memories, such as motor memories, rely on the basal ganglia and cerebellum.
As they mention in their book, The New Science of Learning, Terry Doyle and Todd Zakrajsek share that a person can actually remember quite a lot post-cram-sesh, for about 18 to 36 hours; within a week's worth of time, though, about 75% of that material will be lost (Doyle & Zakrajsek, 2019).
Researchers find evidence that neural systems actively remove memories, which suggests that forgetting may be the default mode of the brain. Our memories do not just fade away on their own. Our brains are constantly editing our recollections, from the very moment those memories first form.
So despite the presence of neurons in the heart, we can see that the heart does not have a mind of its own. Our hearts are complex, vital organs, but the association between heart and mind is best left to metaphor, not real life.
Well, technically speaking, your body can still be alive without a brain. On the other hand, it's pretty difficult for your body to be alive without a heart. In either circumstance, the quality of life is pretty poor without one or the other!
But this is a trick question. When the heart beats, it pumps blood to your lungs and the rest of your body. But in between beats, the heart muscle relaxes as it fills with blood. It relaxes only for a moment after each contraction, but that still counts as resting.
Only a small percentage of heart transplant recipients report personality changes. Characteristics of those describing personality changes attributed to the donor include: environmentally sensitive, sensual, animal loving, music loving, creative and the type to be inclined to go with the flow rather than dominate.
Tissues such as cornea, heart valves, skin, and bone can be donated in case of natural death but vital organs such as heart, liver, kidneys, intestines, lungs, and pancreas can be donated only in the case of 'brain death'.
Transplanted organs don't transfer their DNA to the host any more than the host makes genetic changes to the implanted organs. Unfortunately not: the genetic instruction in the cells of any organ stays the same after being transplanted.
Transplanted Organs Don't Last Forever
Meanwhile, a liver will function for five years or more in 75 percent of recipients. After a heart transplant, the median survival rate of the organ is 12.5 years. A transplanted pancreas keeps working for around 11 years when combined with a kidney transplant.
The amount of information the brain can store in its many trillions of synapses is not infinite, but it is large enough that the amount we can learn is not limited by the brain's storage capacity. However, there are other factors that do limit how much we can learn.
Your circulatory system plays a critical role in keeping you alive. Blood vessels carry blood to the lungs for oxygen. Then your heart pumps oxygen-rich blood through arteries to the rest of the body.
An unexpected discovery made by an international team, examining the results of an EEG on an elderly patient, who died suddenly of a heart attack while the test was in progress.
However, a new study published to Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience suggests that your brain may remain active and coordinated during and even after the transition to death, and be programmed to orchestrate the whole ordeal.
It's well known that a comatose brain can be kept alive for at least decades. That is the case with brain-dead people whose families elect to keep them attached to ventilating machines. Less well explored are artificial means of maintaining a brain wholly separated from its body.
Anecdotally, love is a matter of the heart. However, the main organ affected by love is actually the brain.
Meet Craig Lewis, the first man without a heart. With Mr. Lewis facing imminent death from amyloidosis, a rare autoimmune disease, Craig's doctors did something never before done in history–removed his heart completely without killing him.
Feelings have so much to do with the heart, as they do with the brain. It's actually a two-way relationship. Our emotions change the signals the brain sends to the heart and the heart responds to the brain in complex ways.
While you are thinking and engaging your memory centres, synapses between neurons become stronger, and over time they may weaken. Interestingly, sometimes thoughts and memories that have been long-forgotten, may be accessed again when you have strong enough information to activate those same groups of neurons!
The good news is that it's completely normal not to remember much of your early years. It's known as infantile amnesia. This means that even though kids' brains are like little sponges, soaking in all that info and experience, you might take relatively few memories of it into adulthood.
Adults can generally recall events from 3–4 years old, with those that have primarily experiential memories beginning around 4.7 years old. Adults who experienced traumatic or abusive early childhoods report a longer period of childhood amnesia, ending around 5–7 years old.