WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): Atlanta, Georgia,

December 1992.

17-year-old Amy Tippins is having difficulty breathing.

Suspecting that she has some form of pneumonia,

she makes an appointment with her family doctor.

But the actual diagnosis she receives is, in a word,

shocking.

AMY TIPPINS: My senior year of high school,

I started developing what I thought was pneumonia.

And then when they went in to do some further testing,

they realized I didn't have pneumonia.

It was actually a tumor pressing on my diaphragm

and making it much harder for me to breathe.

And I was in full liver failure.

They said she needs to have a transplant

or she'll hemorrhage to death.

WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): With time running out,

Amy received her new liver and survived.

But in the months following her transplant,

she found herself exhibiting interests

and abilities that were not only new to her,

but also surprising.

AMY TIPPINS: Not long after surgery

some things about myself and some of my traits had changed.

But then a couple of years from my transplant,

I really started to love projects

like replacing flooring on my own,

and I never saw flooring being put in.

I never saw anything like that being done.

What I discovered was it was actually

fun to work with my hands.

Just kind of go, huh, that's interesting.

WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): Of course, it isn't surprising

that people who've had life-saving transplant

operations often report experiencing

a new outlook on life.

But new interests, new personality traits?

Is it possible that Amy Tippins was getting

these from somewhere else?

WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): I knew my donor was a male.

I knew he was 47 and that he had been killed in a car

wreck in Columbus, Georgia.

So I went to the library and I started looking

at obituaries from that time.

And I kind of backed into his obituary

and backed into figuring out who he was.

What I discovered is he was a police officer, he was 47,

and his name was Mike.

His sister told me that he did a lot of his own home renovation.

He also liked to work with his hands.

He liked to do projects.

When I found out who my donor was,

it made a lot more sense on why some things about myself

and some of my traits had changed after transplant.

WILLIAM SHATNER: Can transplanted organs

really contained some part of the donor's identity?

Conventional medicine believes the notion's far-fetched.

So how do you explain what we just saw?

Is our life experience encoded not just in our brain,

but throughout our entire body?