My Spleen To Your Mind, My Lungs To Your Thoughts

When it comes to superpowers, everyone gravitates toward the generic: super strength, super speed, the ability to fly. In other words, the Superman powerset. But there are plenty of other cool superpowers out there, and one of the most underrated is mind control. It's not flashy, but the things you could do if you could influence the minds of other people are almost limitless. You might even be able to persuade the duly elected members of our federal government to, you know, actually govern. Good joke.

Of course, we could argue the ethics of forcefully entering and mucking around with someone's mind, but at the end of the day, mind control is just one of those superpowers that couldn't possibly exist in the real world. Right?

Well, sort of. It may never be possible to wave your hand and convince a stormtrooper that these aren't the droids you're looking for, but a recent study has shown that a frankly insane number of transplant victims report personality changes after receiving an organ, to the tune of 90%. 

Now you might think, "well, of course organ recipients undergo personality changes, they just went through a traumatic experience! Of course they'll have a newfound appreciation for life and the simpler things. There's no weird mind control going on here." And while that is true, the study found that this goes much deeper. We're talking strange, almost uncanny territory. 

For example, the recipient of a heart received from a police officer killed in the line of duty reported experiencing vivid dreams of being shot in the face, accompanied by a physical burning sensation. In addition, a young boy who received the heart of a similarly aged boy out of nowhere refused to touch his collection of Power Rangers, which in a downright-spooky coincidence was the same toy the deceased toddler was reaching for when he fell out a window.

So, what's going on? Well, when it comes to heart transplants, there's actually a decent, if not exactly ironclad explanation: The heart has a nervous system of its own, and could simply be passing on cellular memories from the donor to the recipient. This isn't a definite, "we know exactly what's happening," but the heart's nervous system could absolutely be capable of storing biographical information, and when you put a heart loaded with memories into an entirely new body, some crossed wires and the resulting personality changes make sense.

That said, these weird personality changes are not exclusive to heart transplants – nor are they even more common. You're just as likely to inherit your kidney donor's love for tap dancing as you would be for your heart donor's. And the researcher's thoughts on how genetic memories are passed through non-heart organs are much less convincing, ranging from DNA, RNA, and proteins to epigenetics. In other words, they have no idea how it happens, only that it does.

At some point, we'll probably understand what exactly is going on with these transplanted organs, but for now, we can all be secure in the knowledge that, if you ever really want to mess with someone's head, all you have to do is die, get them to take one of our organs, and wait for the fireworks as they discover they no longer like to eat ice cream. Worst. Superpower. Ever.