Organ transplants can lead to profound personality changes, suggests study

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No matter which organ they got, over 90% of transplant patients, 23 heart recipients, and 24 other recipients, experienced personality changes following surgery, according to an online survey.

Since the first human heart transplants in 1967, patients have reported strange and inexplicable personality changes. Some claim that after surgery, they feel more like their donor and less like themselves. 

For example, a transplant recipient in the 1990s told scientists in a paper published in 2000 that after receiving the heart of a young male musician, she had an unexpected love for music.

According to a recent University of Colorado (CU) study, such profound alterations in personality don't seem to be caused only by heart transplants.

Should these symptoms be closely associated with organ transplants, maybe this indicates that our entire body, not just one or two organs, contains our "sense of self."

The study published in Transplantology collected the data through a questionnaire.

No matter which organ they got, over 90% of transplant patients, 23 heart recipients, and 24 other recipients, experienced personality changes following surgery, according to an online survey.

The majority of patients in the research reported going through four or more personality changes, with the majority of these changes being related to memories, temperament, emotions, eating habits, identity, or religious or spiritual views.

Medical researcher Brian Carter and his colleagues at CU come to the conclusion that "heart transplant recipients may not be unique in their experience of personality changes following transplantation," despite the fact that the study is too small to be statistically significant.

Rather, they contend that more study is necessary since "such changes may occur following the transplantation of any organ."

The CU study is among the first to measure the alterations in personality following a range of organ transplants.

Previous research has only tended to focus on heart transplants, as these are regarded to be the most severe and long-lasting.