19/02/2025
This Feb-ibig, Please Be Careful With Your heart💘🎤🎶
They say that the best way to love is to use your mind, the very seat of all thinking and the storage of memory that is useful in decision-making—one of the great parts of the biological systems involving love. Yet on the day of love, one symbol is greatly celebrated instead: the heart.
For centuries now, it has been unclear how an organ that merely pumps blood is associated with love. There have already been several theories which include the medieval “anatomically accurate” drawings of the heart from years ago as interpreted by Greek physician Galen and the philosopher Aristotle, and the concept that being in love entails a variety of intense emotions, which consequently affect the pounding of the organ.
However, new research suggests that non-brain cells, the heart included, are able to take in memories and store them. It turns out that it is not only the brain that “learns,” but also all the other cells in the body.
The researchers found that similar to the method of learning in spaced repetitions for an exam as opposed to cramming everything in one night, the cells retain the “memory” much stronger in what they call the mass-spaced learning effect (Kukushkin et al., 2024).
This newfound knowledge on cellular memory opens up a complex web of possibilities in the study of memory, as well as what this means for transplanted organs—wherein several studies have looked into the field of cellular memory, as recipients exhibit personality changes after organ transplantation, most commonly in heart transplant recipients (Liester, 2020).
Cellular memory is thought to cause this phenomenon as memories of heart donors are hypothesized to be somehow encoded within the cells of their hearts and are then transferred to its recipient. Leister (2020) mentions that there are various possible vehicles for the transfer of memories from donor to recipient. This includes epigenetics, DNA, RNA, and proteins.
However, further research is still needed to study whether patterns are connected to this activity (Devitt, 2024).
The body remembers in a way similar to how the brain does. While love starts in the brain due to the chemicals it releases, the heart should also be treated gently. Venturing out from the concept of cellular memory, the “organ of love” is negatively affected by sadness and on the other hand, displays positive outcomes when experiencing love.
🖊: Bernadette Borlagdan
✒️: Harlene Mae Denina
Reference:
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1vzNiGwBWXut_rgd4zYMlxDqdMayTQZ39QMS_wq26G0g/mobilebasic?pli=1
