The Brain Implant That Changed Rita Leggett's Sense of Self

Thursday - May 25 2023, 19:56 UTC - 11 months ago

Rita Leggett was an Australian woman whose experimental brain implant caused a significant shift in her sense of agency and self. She signed up for a clinical trial in 2010 and had four electrodes implanted on her brain to monitor her activity. The device was successful in helping Leggett predict and prevent her epilectic seizures. However, in 2013 the company who made the device went out of business and Leggett had to have the implant removed, leaving her with a reminder of the ethical implications of increasingly intimate technology.

Sticking an electrode inside a person’s brain can do more than treat a disease. Take the case of Rita Leggett, an Australian woman whose experimental brain implant changed her sense of agency and self. She told researchers that she "became one" with her device.

She was devastated when, two years later, she was told she had to remove the implant because the company that made it had gone bust.

"Being forced to endure removal of the [device] … robbed her of the new person she had become with the technology," Ienca and his colleagues wrote. "The company was responsible for the creation of a new person … as soon as the device was explanted, that person was terminated."Leggett received her device during a clinical trial for a brain implant designed to help people with epilepsy. She was diagnosed with severe chronic epilepsy when she was just three years old and routinely had violent seizures.

The unpredictable nature of the episodes meant that she struggled to live a normal life, says Frederic Gilbert, a coauthor of the paper and an ethicist at the University of Tasmania, who regularly interviews her. "She couldn’t go to the supermarket by herself, and she was barely going out of the house," he says. "It was devastating."Leggett was recruited for the clinical trial when she was 49 years old, says Gilbert. A research team in Australia was testing the effectiveness of a device designed to warn people with epilepsy of upcoming seizures. Trial volunteers had four electrodes implanted to monitor their brain activity. Recordings were sent to a device that trained an algorithm to recognize patterns preceding a seizure.

A handheld device would signal how likely a seizure was to occur in the coming minutes or hours—a red light indicated an imminent seizure, while a blue light meant a seizure was very unlikely, for example. Leggett signed up and had the device implanted in 2010.

Human-machine symbiosis .

While trial participants enjoyed varying degrees of success, the device worked brilliantly for Leggett. For the first time in her life, she had agency over her seizures—and her life. With the advance warning from the device, she could take medication that prevented the seizures from occurring.

"I felt like I could do anything," she told Gilbert in interviews undertaken in the years since. "I could drive, I could see people, I was more capable of making good decisions." Leggett herself, now 62, declined an interview; she is recovering from a recent stroke.

She also felt that she became a new person as the device merged with her. "We had been surgically introduced and bonded instantly," she said. "With the help of science and technicians, we became one." .

Gilbert and Ienca describe the relationship as a symbiotic one, in which two entities benefit from each other. In this case, the woman benefited from the algorithm that helped predict her seizures. The algorithm, in turn, used recordings of the woman’s brain activity to become more accurate.

But it wasn’t to last. In 2013, NeuroVista, the company that made the device, essentially ran out of money. The trial participants were advised to have their implants removed. (The company did not respond to requests for comment on this story) Leggett faced a new challenge. By removing the implant, she was not only going to come off the medication she had been dependent on for the past three years; she was also in danger of going back to the way she was before the procedure.

"Being forced to endure removal of the [device] … robbed her of the new person she had become with the technology," Ienca and his colleagues wrote. "The company was responsible for the creation of a new person … as soon as the device was explanted, that person was terminated." .

The case of Leggett is a bizarre, cautionary tale that serves a stark reminder of the ethical implications of increasingly intimate technology. Whether it’s slipping a funny-looking device onto your head to answer calls, or implanting a chip into your brain to monitor seizures, researchers must face the questions about how far these devices go in transforming humans and our identity.