I talked to some guy today who claimed he could back up his belief in pantheism with objective evidence. Of course I was both very interested and extremely skeptical.
One of the first things he brought up was that heart transplant patients sometimes experienced a change in personality. After a lot of back and forth, what he apparently meant that there was some person somewhere that drew in a different style after receiving a heart transplant. How any of that proves pantheism is anyone’s guess, but since I promised him to look at the evidence, and I can’t find any, I wonder if anyone can give me a link somewhere that’s well researched.
I’m sorry but I’m going to reserve my comments on the full report until tomorrow. It’s so full of woo I can’t stand reading it all in one go. It doesn’t appear to address anything to do with drawing anyway.
Nothing in the article suggests anything at all about deities. It is about cells in the body, outside of the brain and immune system, having a memory memory function. You could choose to believe it in its entirety, and still be a content monotheist, or an content atheist for that matter.
As far as I can see, you’re right. I’m still wondering about the original claim, though; the one about heart transplants and drawing style - it probably won’t prove anything, but I’m kinda interested where this story came from.
Without having any other information about this supposed phenomenon (which sounds extremely bogus to me) I can come up with a few, more plausible explanations:
the anesthesia or lack of blood flow resulted in brain damage, leading to personality change
the medication to prevent the transplant from being rejected had side effects
improved blood flow after transplant improved/altered brain function, resulting on other physiological changes
I imagine someone with an actual medical background could probably come up with quite a few more hypotheses.
Heck, SiL-the-doctor has noticed personality changes in both herself and some other medical personnel from having a bad case of the flu or getting a minor chronic condition. They went from thinking that anybody complaining about pain was a whiner fishing for happy drugs to actually trying to listen to the patient’s complaints.
No transplants involved, just their own memory of what it feels like when you’re feeling like shit and the doctor treats you like you’re a worm which just crawled out of his sandwich. No change in drawing styles either AFAIK; then again, SiL doesn’t draw much.
One of the ways that cognitive function is measured is by ability to perform a multi-step drawing, either by following instructions (clock drawing or by copying (the Rey-Osterrieth figure).
Recall that the first generation of patients to undergo complex heart surgery for congenital defects is only now reaching adulthood. There are cohorts of these patients being studied as they progress through adolescence and adulthood. Correlation between early surgery and behavioral and cognitive problems later in life has been suggested, and one of the more striking differences is between Rey-Osterrieth drawings by post-surgical adults and by control patients.
Perhaps this is what was alluded to by the OP’s acquaintance.
Nevertheless, ongoing research seems to point to causation lying in the same processes of development (neural crest cell migration) that affect cardiac anatomy also affecting neurocognitive functioning.
