At the very base of it, we human beings are mimics by nature. The whole concept of “monkey see, monkey do” is ingrained into our consciousness from almost the moment we are born.
Those of you that have children, think about the moment your child spoke their first word. They didn’t come up with that idea on their own. They watched you and listened to you speak and eventually figured out how to emulate fully what you were doing.
As we all get older and make friends, we continue to be mimics. If you have a group of friends that dressed a certain way, it stands to reason that you emulated that style of dress a little bit as well.
You probably listened to the same music that your friends listened to. Yes, we are natural mimics and we often take on the personalities of those around us.
Those of you with kids, you remember that one friend that your kid had growing up that you just absolutely couldn’t stand. Their personality was not meshing well with the type of person you wanted your kid to be like.
Sometimes we just imitate people, even if we never had any contact with them.
Every now and then when someone is the recipient of an organ transplant, it is said that they will often take on the personality traits of the person who they got their shiny new liver from.
Well, a lot of these stories seemed to be nothing more than old wives’ tales. Now, through the work of some enterprising and absolutely brilliant scientists, it seems that this phenomenon is being regarded as more fact than fiction.
A recent study conducted by the University of Colorado conducted a survey of forty-seven people (23 heart recipients and 24 other organ recipients) detailing various experiences after their respective transplant surgeries.
Almost 90% of the people surveyed in the study noticed striking personality changes regardless of the organ that they had received.
Some of the new personality traits that the recipients reported were new food preferences and various behavior patterns just to name two.
One transplant recipient even reported developing a love of music after having the heart of a musician in the 1990s.
There’s still a long way to go in determining the root cause as to why this occurs in transplant recipients. However, the fact that a link has been established is an absolutely astonishing breakthrough.
