by Alicia M Prater PhD

Created on: March 28, 2008   Last Updated: November 29, 2011

Cellular memory is the concept that some characteristic of a cell is retained when the cell is transplanted. Many attribute this concept to memories and personality existing within every cell in our body. Ideas abound in movies and books about the essence of one person transferring to another with a body part - to both the comfort and detriment of the recipient, but science offers an altogether different explanation.

The idea of a donor passing something to a transplant recipient is easily found in the scientific literature from at least the past decade, though the clinical anecdotes and fictional stories of such experiences have existed for much longer. Recent research has found that the chemical characteristics of cells (e.g., the proteins they express on their surface, the epigenetic markup of their DNA) can be transferred from the donor to the recipient, which can cause tissue-dependent alterations. Cellular memory is also considered necessary for cells to maintain their genetic integrity. Overall, it is simply chemicals and their signals retained in the cells, which ultimately alters the cellular environment of the recipient. It is not, by any means, transferred consciousness. In this case, "memory" means something different.

Misunderstanding Terminology

Popularized in movies such as "The Eye", "Idle Hands", "Blink", "Return to Me", and "Body Parts", cellular memory is a speculative theory on the transference of properties from a donor to a recipient upon transplant. Much of the scientific research on the chemical compositions of cells has been misinterpreted and combined with psychological impressions to create the theory as it has been represented by Hollywood. An indication of this is that most of the material presented scientifically on this form of cellular memory has been published in psychiatric journals, or in journals known to cater to the pseudosciences, fields that attempt to approach ideas scientifically but have no way to experiment and gain empirical evidence (i.e. psychiatry attempts to understand what a person thinks and why, it doesn't have an objective measure to report).

A popular argument by those who want the scientific establishment to accept cellular memory is the story of Claire Sylvia, who received a heart transplant in 1988 and went on to find the donor's family via a series of dreams and fateful encounters. She also claims that the young man's heart she received made her crave beer and fried chicken. A handful of other stories

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