"Every memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain. A discovery that helped explain those changes has earned neuroscientist Oswald Steward one of science’s highest honors.
Steward received the 2026 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, a USD 1 million award and one of science’s most prestigious awards, for research that transformed scientists’ understanding of how the brain learns and stores memories."
And that's what it took. One comment on hackernews and the prize was retracted. HN at its best! ;)
Well, it does seem that memories may be embedded in the nervous system as well as the brain, so I don’t think the OP is wrong. You sometimes hear of heart transplant patients having other people’s memories / preferences. So, it’s not good evidence, but it’s a possibility.
That's quite a leap. The idea that _semantic_ memories are encoded so as to be transmissible via blobs of neural tissue stretches plausibility.
It doesn't seem so implausible: Personality Changes Associated with Organ Transplants (https://www.mdpi.com/2673-3943/5/1/12)
> Personality changes have been reported following organ transplantation. Most commonly, such changes have been described among heart transplant recipients. [...] A cross-sectional study was conducted in which 47 participants (23 heart recipients and 24 other organ recipients) completed an online survey. In this study, 89% of all transplant recipients reported personality changes after undergoing transplant surgery, which was similar for heart and other organ recipients.
Who knows the cause though, could be anything I suppose, not necessarily that "memory sits in tissue".
It's massive, hugely traumatic surgery, taking the patient past what was considered the point of death a century ago, bringing them back alive, and all with the aid of some of the most powerful drugs in modern medicine's arsenal.
And if your heart is needing transplantation in the first place, you'll be running far below optimal for blood O2 and a dozen other things.
It'd be more surprising if it didn't result in significant change.
> if your heart is needing transplantation in the first place, you'll be running far below optimal for blood O2 and a dozen other things.
that's not obvious on the face of it from a mechanical standpoint. I'd you're sick enough to need one, wouldn't we just give you a mechanical temporary replacement, and keep that one going as high as possible instead as low as possible?
Having a suddenly functioning heart probably does wonders for hormone levels and consequently personality.
I once realized that the “snowball” of dread/fear in my chest was likely a minor irregular heartbeat (that I’ve always had) exacerbated in stressful situations.
Just 47 participants in the online study and a wide variety of psychological issues: “depression, anxiety, psychosis, and sexual dysfunction.”. A few of them found religion.
Is anyone surprised that surviving traumatic surgery with a long debilitating recovery time causes mental stress?
> Is anyone surprised that surviving traumatic surgery with a long debilitating recovery time causes mental stress?
No, but some of the references reports and studies (referenced in the above study), if truthful, would be too much of a coincidence, no?
> a heart and lung transplant at Yale-New Haven hospital in 1988. Following surgery, Sylvia developed a new taste for green peppers and chicken nuggets, foods she previously disliked. As soon as she was released from the hospital, she promptly headed to a Kentucky Fried Chicken to order chicken nuggets. She later met her donor’s family and inquired about his affinity for green peppers. Their response was, “Are you kidding? He loved them… But what he really loved was chicken nuggets”
> a 5-year-old boy received the heart of a 3-year-old boy but was not informed about his donor’s age or cause of death. Despite this lack of information, he provided a vivid description of his donor after the surgery: “He’s just a little kid. He’s a little brother like about half my age. He got hurt bad when he fell down. He likes Power Rangers a lot I think, just like I used to. I don’t like them anymore though” (p. 70, [8]). Subsequently it was reported that his donor had died after falling from an apartment window while trying to reach a Power Ranger toy that had fallen onto the window ledge. After receiving his new heart, the recipient refused to touch or play with Power Rangers
I'm sure there might be other explanations to all of these, but at least people are trying to study it more.
what do we know about memory other we think in our brains so that's where consciousness must be stored? What do we know about memory that makes that necessarily a leap? What is so special about semantic memory?
Er no. That doesn't happen.
Memory stored in RNA is a known thing:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.11.711021v1
https://www.sciencealert.com/worms-can-share-memories-of-a-b...