Most examples of cellular memory in transplant patients are recorded by scientists doing studies, with the aid of a hospital system that forbids the transplantee to know or speak to the donor's family. Because of this most of the cases are written of without the use of names, leaving these patients stories at large but still in obscurity.

One of the few cases we know the patient's name was a woman called Claire Sylvia who received a heart and lung transplant in the 1970s from an eighteen year old male donor who had been in a motorcycle accident. None of this information was known to Sylvia, who upon waking up claimed she had a new and intense craving for beer, chicken nuggets, and green peppers, all food she didn't enjoy prior to the surgery. A change in food preferences is probably the most noted in heart transplant patients. Sylvia wrote a book about her experiences after learning the identity of her donor called A Change of Heart.

Other documented cases have been perplexing and sometimes extreme. A 47 year old man receiving a heart from a 17 year old black boy suddenly picked up an intense fondness for classical music. The boy whose heart had been donated was killed in a drive-by shooting, still clutching his violin case in his hands. A 47 year old transplant patient claimed that his new heart was responsible for a sudden onset of eating disorders, heralded from the heart's previous owner, a 14 year old girl. Once a change in sexual orientation was even documented in a twenty seven year old lesbian who soon after getting a new heart settled down and married a man.

The most stunning example of cellular memory was found in an eight year old girl who received the heart of a ten year old girl. The recipient was plagued after surgery with vivid nightmares about an attacker and a girl being murdered. After being brought to a psychiatrist her nightmares proved to be so vivid and real that the psychiatrist believed them to be genuine memories. As it turns out the ten year old whose heart she had just received was murdered and due to the recipients violent reoccurring dreams she was able to describe the events of that horrible encounter and the murderer so well that police soon apprehended, arrested, and convicted the killer.

Other common quirks recorded have been changes in attitude, temperament, vocabulary, patience levels, philosophies, and tastes in food and music. The phenomena has just recently been put into studies. The most notable of which was Dr Paul Peasall's questioning of 150 heart transplant patients which was published in Near-Death Studies magazine in 2002 entitled "Changes in Heart Transplant Recipients That Parallel the Personalities of Their Donors" from which the aforementioned cases are mostly from.