People who have received organ transplants sometimes have memories from the person that donated the organ.
from:
http://www.discoveryhealth.co.uk/tv/t_bestof.asp?storyid=118914&oldstoryid=118984
Among the general public, I don’t believe there is that much bias toward thinking that the mind lives only in the brain. The English language is peppered with signs to the contrary. A good, generous person has a big heart. If she follows a hunch, she’s going with a gut feeling. If he has a pang of conscience, he has heard a small, still voice. John Hiatt sings, “I’m so easily led when the little head does the thinking.” A coward is told to show some backbone. One who shows audacious chutzpah really has some balls/ovaries. Ads for Barry Goldwater said, “In your heart, you know he’s right.”
I’m pretty sure our experts don’t know much about how the brain works, let alone the mind. Still, they’re probably more biased than the rest of us.
This expresses the basis for this thread. Part of me is willing to buy into the efforts of Science to explain Mind as a process or a function of Brain. Another part of me is clinging to the trappings of our culture where mind, heart, soul, spirit, consciousness and other non-material aspects of our existence are dealt with as if there are no material connections to them.
Whether the “21 grams” experiment proved anything or not, it’s still unsettling to admit that the “life force” is just some byproduct of our corporeal beings. And yet, I don’t know what else to attribute it to. And I don’t think Science does either.
One of the most unsettling things to think about is why the dictionary (no matter which one) exhibits the tightest “circular definition set” when it comes to life and death and the offshoot words associated with each. It just seems that after 2000-plus years of dealing with the issue(s) we’re not all that much further along (outside of fiction) in defining what it is that makes us tick.
I do sense a bias toward the scientific efforts to explain. It seems so reasonable in a way to go that route. Something about that approach, however, concerns me in that we seem to be leaving so much else unexplained from our culture. That may be a good thing that’s just very hard to adjust to.
I don’t buy this. My understanding is that people who claim to have “transplant memory,” if kept blind about their organ donor’s history, cannot reliably reconstruct information about their donor (my cite is Stiff by Mary Roach, an excellent book about death, dying, and cadavers). A PubMed search turned up a few case reports, but there’s not even an abstract to go on. This transplant surgeon says BS (although it’s from 1996). Ah! Here’s a cite pertaining your exact person! Seems she has a book to sell :rolleyes: ! Is this article referring to the diffuse neuroendocrine system (full text available!) or perhaps some spinal ganglion?
On the scientific side of the OP, could one logically draw a conclusion that, given the brain is the major organ within an entire neurological network, that the network itself is essential in the concept of “self” and therefore the concept of “mind” may extend beyond the limits of the brain and into the rest of the network? Considering that, if the brain itself were isolated from one network and “rewired” into another network (fully realizing that the medical possiblilitys of this are slim and disreguarding the ethics of it altogether), what would change? Personality? Perception? Memory? If a part of this network were removed and “rewired” into a part of a different network (amputation and transplantation), if the “network” aspect of the organ or limb were to remain functional, would it not be possible to carry some information from the original donor to the host and integrate this information? Of course, if any given part of the network were removed, that is not to say it would affect the performance (or ability to perform) of the rest of the network. Removing a limb or organ may have some effect on a person’s neurologic function, but most likely not a major one and in any case not as much of an effect as it would on the physical function of the system said limb or organ were removed from.
In reguards to the Bias side of the OP, it is my experience that most bias comes from pride. We, as both individuals and collective society, seem to hang on to what ever vestiges of pride we can find (or are led to believe). I have no idea why this is and nothing to back it up, it’s just an observation. But, people who have a bias into disbelief of extra-terrestrial life for example, possess the tendency toward pride in that we are the only sentient creatures in the universe. The same seems true with bias toward and against religion, creationism, evolution, etc… Name any bias and I can counter with a pride that stands behind it. The bias that the mind is in the brain, I would theorize, arizes from the pride that we understand the physical aspects of the human body, either that or that we are a random and fortunately sentient collection of mass and neurons with no outside input or source other than our own origin. Again, this is just an opinion, but I would say we are inherently biased toward this way of thinking simply because we are inherently, and egotistically, drawn toward pride.