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[...] Years later, "he is completely off all medication and shows no psychiatric symptoms," Dr. Miyaoka told me in an email. Somehow the transplant cured the man's schizophrenia.
A bone-marrow transplant essentially reboots the immune system. Chemotherapy kills off your old white blood cells, and new ones sprout from the donor's transplanted blood stem cells. It's unwise to extrapolate too much from a single case study, and it's possible it was the drugs the man took as part of the transplant procedure that helped him. But his recovery suggests that his immune system was somehow driving his psychiatric symptoms.
At first glance, the idea seems bizarre — what does the immune system have to do with the brain? — but it jibes with a growing body of literature suggesting that the immune system is involved in psychiatric disorders from depression to bipolar disorder.
He Got Schizophrenia. He Got Cancer. And Then He Got Cured.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:57AM (8 children)
This is well known amongst nurses. Transplant the kidney of a playboy and the shy dude becomes flirty and talks with a new accent, etc. The idea your personality is stored in your brain is wrong.
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:01AM (1 child)
Well, we do know where too many men store their personality.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:05AM
It seems to be controlled ed by the collective set of hormones released by all organs and the feedback-determined response to that over the course of the person's lifetime. You aren't allowed to think that though.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:13AM (1 child)
https://www.medicaldaily.com/can-organ-transplant-change-recipients-personality-cell-memory-theory-affirms-yes-247498 [medicaldaily.com]
I know a little girl with a kidney transplant. I'll mail the link to her mother
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:44AM
"Cell Memory Theory" sounds like something a Homeopath might try to sell.
Also Medical Daily "we want our stories to be the kind of things you talk about at a bar with your friends."
I'm not buying it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:24AM
It's also known that cells from babies can end up in their mother's brains: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-discover-childrens-cells-living-in-mothers-brain/ [scientificamerican.com]
So I wouldn't be surprised that in some cases stem cells from a transplanted organ could end up in the recipient's brain and change stuff.
See also: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3518667/ [nih.gov]
On a vaguely related note: https://www.livescience.com/63596-organ-donation-transmitted-breast-cancer.html [livescience.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:29PM
It's a good piece of folk knowledge, like RNs that report anecdotes morphed into folklore and superstition that support the existence of a soul. And it makes us feel validated somehow, as though our existence is more authentic if we can establish ways that our unique selves survive brain death... or establish anything that could even plausibly be the immutable, eternal "me" that can't be suddenly altered beyond recognition by surviving a railroad spike flying through part of my brain, for example.
Somebody get a candle to light the dark of this demon-haunted world. As much as I love folklore, I need some actual studies before I believe that. I can imagine plausible ways it could work, and when I've smoked some really dank stuff and watched Interstellar it makes sense that dark matter is actually spirit matter that weakly interacts with our spacetime continuum through a gravity-love force, and thus Sailor Moon is perfectly compatible with the laws of physics....
but my baloney detection kit is going off here.
(Score: 1) by HyperQuantum on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:39PM
I've heard a story once about someone's personality having changed after receiving a blood transfusion.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:46AM
I've been married to one for 20 years. I will ask her when I get home.
Citation Required.