Memory has been relegated to hippocampus as a specialized, fully differentiated and organ specific function. Blast cell traits gone and erased.
Heck, we even have experimental and pathological specimens of different memory loss types stratified according to different areas of brain as evidenced by MRI and SPECT scans.
Korsakoff, most commonly known to ordinary folks is due to chronic alcohol abuse and if anybody contested that, he would be laughed off whatever medical high ground he might have had.
Thiamine deficiency or Werneckes encephalopathy has driven us past that debate. Very reversible in acute phase.
The memory of his or her disgraced contention would be something he would carry as a cross around his neck untill he drinks enough alcohol to drown it off or Korsakoff erase it (if he is lucky to be affected that quickly) or old enough to be saved by Alzheimer’s. That is if your not Bathabile Dlamini or ANC badged in some way. They seem to be ignorant enough to keep re surfacing, with little memory of their previous transgressions.
The amygdala and the diencephalic connection I will leave for more academic discussions. This is a public debate. Open to all, including the aforementioned group.
When for the first time I got made aware that Mr. X, a post liver transplant patient believed he was carrying the memories and aspirations of the donor with him, I got defensive.
I was trapped within my comfort zone; I wanted to explain it medically. A liver is a detoxifier; memory function is in the hippocampus, amygdala and diencephalon.
Alcoholic liver disease residual complications I quipped. He already had brain damage by the time he received the liver, I figured.
The wife of a post cardiac transplant patient then next told me her husband could have been somebody else personality wise. She told me she frequently has to look to appreciate the he is the same old Harry she married years ago. She felt guilty that she wanted a divorce. The man she married was no more. I had no more carpet to stash the shit. I had to come clean. My medical protection was peeled off. The stink was overwhelming.
To push this line of thought even further, fat cells in my field has a memory chip that would remind them even after spending years in Somalia or German concentration camp even as Jew, that good times, are back, the minute you relocate to South Africa.
The reload function starts the minute the excess is recorded by the insulin glucose homeostasis. One could be paper thin for years or life time but it won’t die, it’s waiting for the insulin, leptin and glucose signal to fulfill its life time function and the memory is in the fat cell, not the brain.
The memory is in the cardiac muscle for the beat to resume the minute the external and internal environment is made optimal. You don't need the brain for the pacemaker to kick in.
Why do we limit the capacity to remember to rudimentary function when it suits us? Why can’t the heart muscle remember the donor wants no alcohol?
Differentiated as it is (remember that all cells start as the blast cell) every cell in the body has what the hippocampal cell has, a memory function.
Hardcore extra brain cellular memory followers will have us believe that each cell has an imprint that it radiates out into space for everybody awake enough to read.
They even believe that the heart and not the brain is the center of an electro magnetic pulse and could be responsible for most of the memory radiation and therefore transfer to those who have detection mechanisms to read it.
Could the transplant recipient be the innocent medium through which this radiation is seen by others?
Could we be avoiding the truth believing brain and brain alone is self when the true self is distributed through out the body, the heart being possibly first?
Are we transplanting memories? For the recipient to have a good enough recollection of the events preceding the shooting of the donor (color of clothing, race, place where it happened and the car) to help the police arrest the killer is not coincidence. Data is being misread and poorly understood. Are we perched too high up the shoulders of the giants to see the ground?
I grew up knowing that one should listen to one's heart. Literally so. Let no one parable talk you into interpreting what your parents taught you. Parents are no double talking misfits.
When did medicine teach me the heart could listen and see?
If biochemistry and physiology beauty and health are the elements of every mix, then results are assured
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