These organ transplant patients had sudden personality changes after surgery… doctors believe they inherited donors’ memories

Anne Marie Switzer waited 50 years for a new heart.

The Canadian was born with a heart defect in which two major arteries that carry blood away from the heart were mixed up.

She had her first heart surgery at two days old and spent five decades in and out of hospitals until in 2016 she finally got a donor match.

But within months of receiving the lifesaving organ, she noticed a scary change: she no longer felt butterflies inside when she saw her husband, Ed, and she didn’t feel as warm and fuzzy about her family and friends.

Mrs Switzer, now 58, said that inside she knew she loved her family but didn’t ‘get that squishy feeling anymore.’ 

At the time, in 2022, people thought she was crazy. But a growing body of research suggests patients like Mrs Switzer could be ‘inheriting’ memories from their donors. 

In fact, one study published last year found nearly nine in 10 organ recipients surveyed reported personality changes. 

For some, the shifts are subtle. Three decades before Mrs Switzer, Claire Sylvia of Massachusetts received a new heart and a pair of lungs. Shortly after, she asked for a beer and started craving Kentucky Fried Chicken, just like her 18-year-old donor.  

But for others, the memories are more chilling, like a five-year-old who developed a ‘deathly’ fear of drowning and the professor who saw ‘flashes of light,’ much like his gunshot victim donor.  

The idea is not well understood, but some experts suggest memories may be stored within transplanted organs because they share cells and neurons similar to those found in the brain.

Introducing new organs to the body may also trigger changes in gene expression, resulting in different preferences and personality traits that are not directly linked to the donor’s personality.

Mrs Switzer told CBC Radio in 2022 that while thinking about used to make her feel warm and fuzzy, her thoughts are now colder and more factual.

She said: ‘I love my husband, but I don’t always get twitterpated anymore,’ referring to the love-at-first-sight term coined by the movie Bambi.  

‘It’s definitely a loss … because I’m a heart person; I’m a love person; I’m a relationship person. I don’t know how many people have told me, “You’ve got such a big heart.” And I miss that.

‘Why don’t I feel that?’

In a 2024 review in the journal Cureus, researchers wrote: ‘Emerging evidence suggests that heart transplantation may involve the transfer of the donor’s personality traits and memories to the recipient, challenging conventional views of memory and identity.

‘Additionally, the heart’s neural network and bidirectional communication with the brain support the concept of heart-brain connection in memory and personality.’ 

The team suggested that these changes could be due to a transfer of cellular memory, which suggests that individual cells may be able to form memories. However, the mechanism for this is still unclear. 

Additionally, a 2020 review suggested that memories can be stored in DNA, RNA, and proteins within cells outside the brain. 

Other recent research has suggested introducing ‘foreign’ tissues to the body through organ donation could trigger an immune response in the recipient, causing genes to express themselves differently to adapt to the new tissues.

In some cases, genes associated with personal preferences could be changed.

For some organ recipients, donor memories have been focused on how the donors died.  

In a review from the journal Integrative Medicine, researchers interviewed 74 transplant recipients, many of whom were given new hearts.

In one highlighted case study, nine-year-old boy received a heart from a three-year-old girl who drowned in her family’s pool due to parental negligence. 

Though the boy had no idea how his donor died, his mother reported that he became ‘deathly afraid of water.’ 

The mother said: ‘He loved it before. We live on a lake and he won’t go out in the backyard. He keeps closing and locking the back door walls. 

‘He says he’s afraid of the water and doesn’t know why. He won’t talk about it.’ 

The boy, who claimed he didn’t know the little girl, also said he could feel her presence and speak to her.

He told researchers: ‘I talk to her sometimes. I can feel her in there. She seems very sad. She is very afraid. I tell her it’s okay, but she is very afraid. 

‘She says she wishes that parents wouldn’t throw away their children. I don’t know why she would say that.’

In another report, a five-year-old boy received a new heart from a three-year-old boy. The donor fell from an apartment window trying to reach a Power Ranger toy. 

The recipient’s mother reported her son stopped playing with his Power Rangers toys shortly after. 

The recipient’s parents claimed their son didn’t know his donor’s name, but he decided to call him Timmy. It turned out, the boy’s name was Thomas. 

The boy also allegedly correctly predicted his donor’s age. 

Additionally, the researchers interviewed a 56-year-old college professor who received a heart from a fallen police officer. The officer’s family said he was shot in the face.

The recipient recalled: ‘I only knew that my donor was a 34-year-old very healthy guy. A few weeks after I got my heart, I began to have dreams. I would see a flash of light right in my face and my face gets real, real hot. It actually burns.’ 

And a 47-year-old received a heart from a teenager who died in a drive-by shooting, clutching his violin case. 

Though the man said he used to hate classical music, he began to ‘love’ it after his transplant.

He said: ‘Now it calms my heart. I play it all the time. I more than like it.’ 

Others have adopted hobbies and preferences from their donors.  

Kevin Mashford, a 48-year-old father of three from the UK, was born with congenitally correct transposition of the great arteries (CCTGA).

The one-in-25,000 heart condition occurs when the heart’s two ventricles are reversed, which can cause issues with blood flow and heart rhythm, weakening the heart over time.

Mr Mashford received a new heart in 2014 from an avid cyclist named John, who was killed in a car crash while out on his bike. 

A week after the operation, Mr Mashford, who had never cycled before, asked physiotherapists to bring an exercise bike to his room.  

A year after the surgery, he completed a 342-mile race across the UK, with the words ‘RIP John’ written inside his helmet. 

When Ms Sylvia received her heart-lung transplant in 1988, she told a reporter on her third-day post-op: ‘I’m really dying for a beer right now.’

She was taken aback by this, as she didn’t even like beer before the surgery. 

And once she was allowed to drive, she immediately went to Kentucky Fried Chicken because she was craving chicken nuggets. Before her transplant, she never got fast food. 

Her daughter also described her gait as ‘manly.’

In 1998, Ms Sylvia also received a kidney transplant. In the months after, she claimed she developed her donor’s love of cooking. 

She also noticed herself becoming more confident, independent, and assertive. 

Jessica Manning, 31, said her personality stayed the same after her liver transplant six years ago.

However, her taste for different foods started changing about two years after the procedure.

Ms Manning, who lives in Australia, said in a TikTok video: ‘The one thing that has changed for me is my tastebuds.

‘There was a whole bunch of food that I used to absolutely hate that now I love and require in my diet all the time. There’s also some foods I used to love that I no longer like.’

Mrs Switzer also said she developed a taste for pickles on her hamburgers after a lifetime of avoiding them.  

As the science on this phenomenon is still limited, many critics have suggested the findings are too coincidental to prove memories can be transferred through organ donation. 

Others have suggested the personality changes may instead be a psychological response to recovering from major surgery and near-deadly heart conditions.

Experts from McGill University in Canada, for example, suggested that immunosuppressant medications that organ recipients have to take can cause increases in appetite, which could change their perspective on food.

Other research suggests that recipients may go into the surgery already worried about inheriting their donor’s behaviors or personality traits, which could lead to behavioral changes.

The stress of having a major, lifesaving operation can also cause patients to change their outlooks on certain aspects of their lives like relationships. 

Mrs Switzer, who also received a kidney transplant last month for other health issues, said that while she understands the science is murky, only people who have done through organ transplants can decide if these changes are real.

She said: ‘They can [only speak to knowing of, but they can’t speak to knowing, unless they’ve had that experience.’