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“Changes in Heart Transplant Recipients That Parallel the Personalities of Their Donors”
Section snippets
{Donor 1: “Danny, My Heart is Yours.” Recipient 1: “I Could Finish the Phrases of His Songs.”}
20 years after transplant, Claire Sylvia celebrates life with “family of my heart”
CONSTANCE GORFINKLE

Claire Sylvia’s nickname might as well be Job – she’s had as many trials as the biblical figure. But she’s not complaining.
“I’m just glad I’ve had an influence on the medical field,” she said.
The 68-year-old has survived three organ transplants, breast cancer, Parkinson’s disease and a near-fatal case of shingles. The former Hull resident was the first person in New England to receive a heart-lung transplant.
But as the 20th anniversary of that operation approaches, Sylvia is talking about her contribution to the study of something a bit more mysterious: organ recipients who have taken on characteristics of the donors.
Shortly after waking up from her heart-lung operation on May 29, 1988, Sylvia said she began to experience strange feelings, a new self-confidence, great surges of physical energy and cravings for things she had never liked before, including beer.
Six months later, she had a dream that she believes answered her questions about the changes she had undergone. The dream was about a tall young man with sandy hair with whom she felt a strong bond, so strong that “I knew we’d be together forever,” Sylvia recalled.
Sylvia was convinced the man in the dream was her donor. That belief led her to Tim Lamirande’s obituary. He was 18 when he was killed in a motorcycle accident in his home state of Maine. He was her organ donor. Sylvia, who lived in Hull for 30 years before moving to Florida, became a best-selling author in 1997 with “A Change of Heart: A Memoir.” The book has been published in 12 languages and was made into a film, “Heart of a Stranger,” starring Jane Seymour.
With all the publicity Sylvia’s case generated, other organ recipients came forward. Sylvia and nine others participated in a study by University of Arizona scientists Gary Schwartz, Linda Russek, and Paul Pearsall. The trio of scientists concluded that cells of living tissue have the capacity to remember.”Cellular memory,” it’s called, Sylvia said.
The study, entitled “Changes in Heart Transplant Recipients That Parallel the Personalities of Their Donors,” appeared in the Journal of Near-Death Studies.
Earlier this month, Sylvia began celebrating the anniversary of her double transplant with Tim Lamirande’s family.
At the beginning, she said, it was scary. “It was confusing, frightening, exhilarating. I had so many feelings and thoughts that were different from whom I had been before the transplants.”Now, she said, she feels like she and Tim are one person.
“After a lot of struggle and a lot of psychotherapy, and working on my dreams, and writing in my journal about what was happening, and meditating, and talking to a lot of people like me, who had had transplants,” she said.
Much of the fear and uncertainty was alleviated after she met Tim’s family and got to know who he was, she said.
“I never thought I’d live long enough to see my daughter graduate from high school. Well, I did that. Then, I saw her graduate from college. And I saw her marry her high school sweetheart,” she said. “Now I have my grandsons and a lasting relationship with the Lamirandes, the family of my heart.”
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Woman dies 21 years after heart-lung transplant that gave her a taste for beer
Dennis Tatz
A Maine teenager’s death in a 1988 motorcycle crash ended up giving life to Claire Sylvia of Hull.
Later, Sylvia said she developed unexplained cravings, such as a taste for beer, that she found out were traits of her donor.
Sylvia, the first person in New England to receive a heart-lung transplant, died Wednesday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She was 69.
“She was amazing,” her daughter, Amara Cohen, said. “She was generous and caring. She was a great mother and grandmother. She went through a lot and she survived.”
A one-time professional dancer, Sylvia received the organs of Tim Lamirande, 18, of Saco, Maine, during a transplant operation at Yale-New Haven Hospital 21 years ago.
Sylvia was 47 when she learned she was dying from primary pulmonary hypertension.
“For a year or more she could only talk in a whisper and slowly,” longtime friend Mary Kennedy of Cohasset said.
Kennedy first met Sylvia in the late 1970s when she was giving dance lessons at her Hull home.
Following the heart-lung transplant, Sylvia was back on her feet and vibrant as ever.
“Claire was a great believer in the supernatural and the spiritual, but she also had her two feet firmly on the ground,” Kennedy said. “She had a quirky sense of humor. No matter how angry she got, she could always laugh herself out of it. She never held grudges.”
Sylvia, who lived in Hull for 30 years before moving to Florida, became a best-selling author in 1997 with “A Change of Heart: A Memoir.” The book was published in 12 languages and made into a film, “Heart of a Stranger,” starring Jane Seymour.
Sylvia later promoted the need for more organ donors and appeared on the Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey television shows to talk about her experiences.
In 1998, Sylvia had additional health problems that led to her receiving a kidney from a former dance partner, who proved a match despite the two being unrelated.
Over the years, Sylvia kept in touch with Lamirande’s family.
“She was a wonderful person,” Joan Lamirande said, fighting back tears in a telephone interview from her home in Saco. “As long as she was living it was as if my son was still alive. Now that she is gone, I know that my son is gone.”
Cohen said her mother had been living in a Brookline apartment while preparing to move to Linden Ponds, a Hingham retirement community.
The exact cause of death hasn’t been determined although she did have a blood clot on her lung, Cohen, 37, of Brookline, said.
Sylvia was coughing and feeling weak when she was admitted to the hospital a week ago. She was due to be released and go to a rehabilitation facility when she died.
Sylvia is also survived by two grandsons, Zachary Cohen, 7, and Andrew Cohen, 4; a sister, Marilyn Kurtz of Long Island, N.Y.; and her son-in-law, Dan Cohen
The study, entitled “Changes in Heart Transplant Recipients That Parallel the Personalities of Their Donors,” appeared in the Journal of Near-Death Studies.
Gary Schwartz, Linda Russek, and Paul Pearsall
By University of Arizona scientists Gary Schwartz, Linda Russek, and Paul Pearsall
‘Changes in Heart Transplant Recipients That Parallel the Personalities of Their Donors’
The Journal of Near-Death Studies.
Gary Schwartz, Linda Russek and Paul Pearsall
Changes in heart transplant recipients that parallel the personalities of their donors
P Pearsall et al. Integr Med. 2000.
Authors
P Pearsall 1 , GE Schwartz, LG Russek
Affiliation
School of Nursing, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA
Abstract
Context: It is generally assumed that learning is restricted to neural and immune systems. However, the systemic memory hypothesis predicts that all dynamical systems that contain recurrent feedback loops store information and energy to various degrees. Sensitive transplant patients may evidence personal changes that parallel the history of their donors.
Objective: To evaluate whether changes following heart transplant surgery parallel the history of the donors. Design: Open-ended interviews with volunteer (1) transplant recipients, (2) recipient families or friends, and (3) donor families or friends. Setting: Hospitals in various parts of the country. Patients: Ten recipients (7 males, 3 females; 7 months to 56 years old), received heart (or heart-lung) transplants (5 males, 5 females; 16 months to 34 years old). Main Outcome Measures: Transcripts of audio taped interviews quoted verbatim. Results: Two to 5 parallels per case were observed between changes following surgery and the histories of the donors. Parallels included changes in food, music, art, sexual, recreational, and career preferences, as well as specific instances of perceptions of names and sensory experiences related to the donors (e.g., one donor was killed by a gun shot to the face; the recipient had dreams of seeing hot flashes of light in his face). Conclusion: The incidence of recipient awareness of personal changes in cardiac transplant patients is unknown. The effects of the immunosuppressant drugs, stress of the surgery, and statistical coincidence are likely insufficient to explain the findings. The plausibility of cellular memory, possibly systemic memory, is suggested.
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Volume 2, Issues 2–3, Spring 2000, Pages 65-72
Original research
Changes in heart transplant recipients that parallel the personalities of their donors
Paul Pearsall PHD. a, Gary E.R Schwartz PHD. b c, Linda G.S Russek PHD b
Abstract
Context: It is generally assumed that learning is restricted to neural and immune systems. However, the systemic memory hypothesis predicts that all dynamical systems that contain recurrent feedback loops store information and energy to various degrees. Sensitive transplant patients may evidence personal changes that parallel the history of their donors.
Objective: To evaluate whether changes following heart transplant surgery parallel the history of the donors. Design: Open-ended interviews with volunteer (1) transplant recipients, (2) recipient families or friends, and (3) donor families or friends. Setting: Hospitals in various parts of the country. Patients: Ten recipients (7 males, 3 females; 7 months to 56 years old), received heart (or heart–lung) transplants (5 males, 5 females; 16 months to 34 years old). Main Outcome Measures: Transcripts of audio taped interviews quoted verbatim. Results: Two to 5 parallels per case were observed between changes following surgery and the histories of the donors. Parallels included changes in food, music, art, sexual, recreational, and career preferences, as well as specific instances of perceptions of names and sensory experiences related to the donors (e.g., one donor was killed by a gun shot to the face; the recipient had dreams of seeing hot flashes of light in his face). Conclusion: The incidence of recipient awareness of personal changes in cardiac transplant patients is unknown. The effects of the immunosuppressant drugs, stress of the surgery, and statistical coincidence are likely insufficient to explain the findings. The plausibility of cellular memory, possibly systemic memory, is suggested.
Section snippets
Donor 1: “Danny, My Heart is Yours.” Recipient 1: “I Could Finish the Phrases of His Songs.”
The donor was an 18-year-old boy killed in an automobile accident. The recipient was an 18-year-old girl diagnosed with endocarditis and subsequent heart failure.
The donor’s father was a psychiatrist.
“My son always wrote poetry. We had waited more than a year to clean out his room after he died. We found a book of poems he had never shown us, and we’ve never told anyone about them. One of them has left us shaken emotionally and spiritually. It spoke of his seeing his own sudden death. He was a musician too, and we found a song he titled ‘Danny, My Heart is Yours.’ The words about how my son felt he was destined to die and give his heart to someone. He had decided to donate his organs when he was 12 years old. We thought it was quite strange but we thought they were talking about it in school. When we met his recipient, we were so . . . we didn’t know like what it was. We don’t know now. We just don’t know.”
The recipient reported:
“When they showed me pictures of their son, I knew him directly. I would have picked him out anywhere. He’s in me. I know he is in me and he is in love with me. He was always my lover, maybe in another time somewhere. How could he know years before he died that he would die and give his heart to me? How would he know my name is Danielle? And then, when they played me some of his music, I could finish the phrases of his songs. I could never play before, but after my transplant, I began to love music. I felt it in my heart. My heart had to play it. I told my mom I wanted to take guitar lessons, the same instru- ment Paul had played. His song is in me. I feel it a lot at night and it’s like Paul is serenading me.”
The recipient’s father reported:
“My daughter, she was what you say . . . a hell raiser. Until she got sick, they say from a dentist they think, she was the wild one. Then, she became quite quiet. I think it was her illness, but she said she felt more energy, not less. She said she wanted to play an instrument and she wanted to sing. When she wrote her first song, she sang about her new heart as her lover’s heart. She said her lover had come to save her life.”
Donor 2: “Jerry’s Baby Talk” Recipient 2: “Carter Said the Same Baby-Talk Words”
The donor was a 16-month-old boy who drowned in a bathtub. The recipient was a 7-month-old boy diagnosed with Tetalogy of Fallot (a hole in the ventricular septum with displacement of the aorta, pulmonary stenosis, and thickening of the right ventricle).
The donor’s mother is a physician:
“The first thing is that I could more than hear Jerry’s [donor] heart. I could feel it in me. When Carter [recipient] first saw me, he ran to me and pushed his nose against me and rubbed and rubbed it. It was
Donor 3: “She Would Look at a Naked Woman Model and Paint a Landscape from That!”
Recipient 3: “He Loves Landscapes and Just Stares”
The donor was a 24-year-old female automobile accident victim. The recipient was a 25-year-old male graduate student suffering from cystic fibrosis who received a heart-lung transplant.
The donor’s sister reported:
“My sister was a very sensual person. Her one love was painting. She was on her way to her first solo showing at a tiny art shop when a drunk plowed into her. It’s a lesbian art store that supports gay artists. My sister was not really very `out’ about it, but she was gay. She said her
Donor 4: “He Died Right There on the Street Hugging his Violin Case” Recipient 4: “I Used to Hate Classical Music, But Now I Love It.”
The donor was a 17-year-old black male student victim of a drive-by shooting. The recipient was a 47-year-old white male foundry worker diagnosed with aortic stenosis.
The donor’s mother reported:
“Our son was walking to violin class when he was hit. Nobody knows where the bullet came from, but it just hit him and he fell. He died right there on the street hugging his violin case. He loved music and his teachers said he had a real thing for it. He would listen to music and play along with it. I
Donor 5: “She Was Man Crazy When She Was a Little Girl and It Never Stopped.”
Recipient 5: “Women Are Still Attractive to Me, But My Boyfriend Turns Me On. I Think I Got A Gender Transplant.”
The donor was a 19-year-old woman killed in an automobile accident. The recipient was a 29-year-old woman diagnosed with cardiomyopathy secondary to endocarditis.
The donor’s mother reported:
“My Sara was the most loving girl. She owned and operated her own health food restaurant and scolded me constantly about not being a vegetarian. She was a great kid. Wild, but great. She was into the free love thing and had a different man in her life every few months. She was man crazy when she was a little
Donor 6: “She Would Skip Meals, and for Awhile, She Was Purging.” Recipient 6: “And There’s Something About Food … I Get Hungry, But I Don’t Want to Eat. It’s Strange.”
The donor was a 14-year-old girl injured in a gymnastics accident. The recipient was a 47-year-old man diagnosed with benign myxoma and cardiomyopathy.
The donor’s mother reported:
“Look at her [showing picture]. My daughter was the picture of health. There wasn’t an once of fat on her. She was a gymnast and her coach could lift her above his head with one hand. She was so excited about life that she would just hop and jump all the time like a kitten. She had some trouble with food, though. She
Donor 7: “Drowned in the Family Pool.”
Recipient 7: “Jimmy is now Deathly Afraid of the Water.”
The donor was a 3-year-old girl who drowned in the family pool. The recipient was a 9-year-old boy diagnosed with myocarditis and septal defect.
The recipient’s mother, about the donor:
“He [the recipient] doesn’t know who his donor was or how she died. We do. She drowned at her mother’s boyfriend’s house. Her mother and her boyfriend left her with a teenage baby sitter who was on the phone when it happened. I never met her father, but the mother said they had a very ugly divorce and that the
Donor 8: “She Would Have Made an Outstanding Physician, but She Wanted to Dance and Sing. That’s How She Died.”
Recipient 8: “I Think She Wanted to be a Nurse or Something, but Other Times It’s Like She Wanted to be on Broadway. I Think She Wanted to be on Broadway More.”
The donor was a 19-year-old woman who suffered a broken neck in dance class. The recipient was a 19-year-old woman diagnosed with cardiomyopathy.
The donor’s mother reported:
“We’ve met Angela [the recipient], and she is the image of our daughter [Stacy]. They could almost be twins. They’re both bright girls, I mean, my daughter was bright too. She wanted to be an actress, but we thought she had too much academic potential for that. Her father is a doctor and really wanted her to follow in his
Donor 9: “Timmy Fell Trying To Reach a Power Ranger Toy that had Fallen on the Ledge of the Window.” Recipient 9: “He Likes Power Rangers A Lot I Think, Just Like I Used To. I Don’t Like Them Anymore Though.”
The donor was a 3-year-old boy who fell from an apartment window. The recipient was a 5-year-old boy with septal defect and cardiomyopathy.
The donor’s mother reported:
“It was uncanny. When I met the family and Daryl [the recipient] at the transplant meeting, I broke into tears. We went up to the giving tree where you hand a token symbolizing your donor. I was already crying when my husband told me to look at the table we were passing. It was the donor family with Daryl sitting there. I knew it
Donor 10: “That’s Exactly How Carl Died. The Bastard Shot Him Right in the Face.”
Recipient 10: “I Would See a Flash of Light Right in my Face and my Face Gets Real, Real Hot. It Actually Burns.”
The donor was a 34-year-old police officer shot attempting to arrest a drug dealer. The recipient was a 56-year-old college professor diagnosed with atherosclerosis and ischemic heart disease.
The donor’s wife reported:
“When I met Ben [the recipient] and Casey, I almost collapsed. First, it was a remarkable feeling seeing the man with my husband’s heart in his chest. I think I could almost see Carl [the donor] in Ben’s eyes. When I asked how Ben felt, I think I was really trying to ask Carl how
Discussion
The set of cases reported here are representative of more than 74 transplant cases, 23 of whom were heart transplants, that were brought to Pearsall’s attention over the past ten years [10]. Since the cases were collected sporadically and clinically, it is not possible to calculate the percentage of patients who reported degrees of personality changes that did or did not parallel the donors to various degrees. The present report provides theoretical and empirical justification for conducting a
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the families of the donors, the recipients, and the families of the recipients, who bravely shared their stories and graciously agreed to have them reported. The 10 heart transplant cases reported here come from a total sample of 74 transplant recipients (23 were heart transplants), all of whom showed various degrees of changes that paralleled the personalities of their donors. We thank the anonymous reviewers of this manuscript for their constructive feedback. We dedicate this …
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1096219000000135
‘Changes in Heart Transplant Recipients That Parallel the Personalities of Their Donors’
The Journal of Near-Death Studies.
Gary Schwartz, Linda Russek and Paul Pearsall
…
Also
Personality Changes Associated with Organ Transplants
Brian Carter 1
, Laveen Khoshnaw 1 , Megan Simmons 2, Lisa Hines 2, Brandon Wolfe 1 and Mitchell Liester 3,*
Citation: Carter, B.; Khoshnaw, L.; Simmons, M.; Hines, L.; Wolfe, B.; Liester, M. Personality Changes Associated with Organ Transplants. Transplantology 2024
Abstract:
Personality changes have been reported following organ transplantation. Most commonly, such changes have been described among heart transplant recipients. We set out to examine whether personality changes occur following organ transplantation, and specifically, what types of changes occur among heart transplant recipients compared to other organ 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. The only personality change that differed between heart and other organ recipients and that achieved statistical significance was a change in physical attributes. Differences in other types of personality changes were observed between these groups but the number of participants in each group was too small to achieve statistical significance. Overall, the similarities between the two groups suggest heart transplant recipients may not be unique in their experience of personality changes following transplantation, but instead such changes may occur following the transplantation of any organ. With the exception of physical attributes, the types of personality changes reported were similar between the two groups. These finding indicate that heart transplant recipients are not unique in their reported experience of personality changes following organ transplantation. Further studies are needed to deepen our understanding of what causes these personality changes.
Keywords: personality change; organ transplant; heart transplant; temperament; emotions; preferences
1. Introduction
More than 144,000 organs were transplanted worldwide in 2021 [1] and just under 8200 heart transplants were performed worldwide in 2020 [2]. Undergoing transplantation surgery can have significant psychological effects and some recipients worry about devel- oping the personality traits of their donor [3]. This concern has been supported by studies that describe heart transplant recipients experiencing changes in their personality after receiving a new organ, with some experiencing traits that were present in their donor [4]. Such reports have appeared in both the medical and lay literature.
Personality changes following transplant surgery are not limited to heart transplan- tation. Pearsall reported changes in personality following the transplantation of kidney, liver, and other organs, but described these changes as generally transitory. He suggested personality changes following heart transplantation appear to be more robust and more strongly associated with the donor’s history than personality changes reported following the transplantation of other organs [4].
While multiple accounts exist of personality changes following organ transplants, there is a paucity of scientific literature quantifying such changes. We set out to explore whether
individuals who underwent organ transplantation experienced personality changes, and if so, what were these changes, and were these changes similar or different in individuals who underwent heart versus other organ transplantation…
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Full Transcript!!
https://fohs.bgu.ac.il/develop/DB2/Heart%20memory/Pearsall,%202000.pdf
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