Talk:Cellular memory/Archive

Useless as written
This is one more wiki page in need of a bit of real research, and exemplafies why wiki is a useless tool for research as its mostly written uop by those least knowledgeable about the topic when not hostile to it. It was clearly written by a very conservative and orthodox person, bilious at the very unorthodox idea that memories may reside elsewhere in the body than the brain..and for which there is a good deal of evidence natural;ly most of which is not in peer reviewed journals, because to the orthodox such ideas are too outrageous to investigate. Id also point out that peer-reviewing is merely a means of shoring up orthodoxies. Whats outrageous today, any be accepted tomorrow.But it wont be peer reviewers who make the discovey. Jalusbrian (talk) 10:01, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

My
My immediate impression of this article is spirituality being passed off as science. SpaceCaptain 22:36, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Mindshock
There was a TV program on Channel 4 in the UK tonight that dealt with this issue. It was part of the Mindshock series -

http://www.channel4.com/health/microsites/W/who_gets_the_heart/index.html

Interesting facts I gleaned from the program :-

5-10% of heart transplant patients report significant personality/tastes/abilities alterations

Experiments show the heart reacts faster to emotional stimuli than the brain

The heart, when transplanted, starts beating automatically as soon as it's 'plugged in'

The heart has a complex neural network throughout it's structure, including neurons (brain cells)

Food for thought

Some digestion of your food for thought. I am trying to help dispel non-scientific beliefs regarding organ transplantation.

5-10% of heart transplant patients report significant personality/tastes/abilities alterations The patients previously had been very ill with heart disease and now they aren't. Obviously this will have a positive effect on personality and abilities.

Experiments show the heart reacts faster to emotional stimuli than the brain By definition, a stimulus is not "emotional" unless it it perceived by the brain. But yes, the entire body including the endocrine system, spinal cord, brain, and heart, are involved in emotional reactions. A couple good places to start are the Fight-or-flight response and the brain's limbic system. It's an ancient myth that the heart is the seat of the emotions.

The heart, when transplanted, starts beating automatically as soon as it's 'plugged in' Basic anatomy tells us that the heart is its own pacemaker and beats automatically. The brain merely regulates its rate. See Heart.

The heart has a complex neural network throughout it's structure, including neurons (brain cells) Yes, like all other organs in the body, it has a complex network of neurons in it. No, all neurons are not brain cells; only the ones in the brains are; otherwise they are called "nerves". However, in heart transplant surgery, the nerves to the heart are severed and not reattached. Although they can very occasionally regrow, in most cases there ends up being no direct connection between heart and brain post-transplant.

Hope this helps.Derek Balsam 15:51, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * A remarkable number of people who undergo bypass surgery (which involves only their own tissues) report changes in personality/tastes/abilities, too. It's major surgery, and the heart-lung machines aren't perfect by any means.  I'm not aware of any reason to believe that the rates are significantly different for "cutting out your heart and sticking it back in again" vs. "cutting out your heart and sticking in someone else's." WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Media portrayal
"In The Eye with Jessica Alba. Also in the video game Assassin's Creed. Scientist's try to unlock clues using the protagonist's cellular memory of his ancestor." We need to delete this. This is very poorly written and unnecessary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.37.71.13 (talk) 05:31, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

A different definition
Cellular memory is the idea that due to various (protein) degradation rates and feedback loops, a cell will "remember" and retain certain phenotypes for some period of time (i.e. memory). Off the top of my head, I can think of this example-- Histones may be used to inhibit gene expression in response to some environmental stimulus. The time that a histone represses gene expression after the environmental stimulus is gone would be cellular memory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.111.22.28 (talk) 19:05, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I found this page
shortly after watching the film The Eye (I'm guessing I'm not alone in that!), it struck me as quite poorly put together, with the overall suggestion that cellular memory was a viable potential concept for memory storage in the body. After a quick literature search I have attempted to re-write the "research" part of the page to give a more balanced view of the topic. I have also corrected the text suggesting that the 2002 study indicating the validity of cellular memory came from the journal of near death experiences, this is incorrect, it actually comes from a discontinued alternative therapy journal.

The bit I wrote about there being no case of memories being passed on from donor to recipient is based on half an hour of trying different keywords on medline!

Oh, if anyone wants a laugh take a look at reference 2, the "evidence" for cellular memory, it's poorly thought out, poorly written, poorly argued, and poorly referenced, it really does have it all, makes you wonder what kind of journal would publish it, no wonder they stopped after 6 issues...

Alexjcharlton (talk) 23:48, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Body memory
Is "body memory" really any different than "cellular memory"? Possibly they could be merged? Шизомби (talk) 20:34, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Trivia
The trivia section is, well, trivia, and deprecated per WP:TRIVIA. It's just a list of pop culture appearances of cellular memory. As WP:TRIVIA says, these should be avoided, particularly since it's unreferenced. Since cellular memory is a fringe hypothesis with minimal mainstream interest or attention, it's going to be short. To avoid the page turning into a List of appearances of cellular memory in popular culture, I'm more in favour of simply removing it. If people are desperate to include it, I would restrict it only to those incidents where it's a notable medium (i.e. a notable film, TV series, or video game) where cellular memory plays a significant role that can be explained. I'm thinking the Dune series as a possibility. But things like the Simpsons, where it's one of three vignettes, unlinked horror stories, no-name films like Body Parts and Return to Me, they don't seem worth including. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 13:00, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I fully support not having a trivia section in this article. It simply does not contribute to any encyclopedic knowledge about the topic.  Lova Falk     talk   17:10, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * In addition it massively outweighed any other content. Support removal. Verbal chat  17:53, 2 June 2010 (UTC)