The human-machine relationship in good times and bad

Merge with a machine? It’s no longer science fiction: this is what Australian patient, Rita Leggett, felt after a brain transplant. His story was reported in a study published in 1^any Last May in the magazine Brain stimulation. Since birth, Rita Leggett has volunteered to test a device to warn her of an impending epileptic seizure. Operated in November 2010, at the age of 49, she described to researchers the symbiosis with her implant as a true symbiosis: “We were one,” she said.

Having “learned” to decipher the signals her brain was sending, the device was able to warn her of an approaching crisis about fifteen minutes in advance, giving her time to go home or take medication to avoid it. Thus, he became a kind of sixth sense that turned his life upside down.

His withdrawal, three years later, was even more painful. Due to a lack of funding, the American company behind the device, NeuroVista, was forced to close. It’s impossible to keep the device without a follow-up: Rita Leggett was the last to extract it, and the Australian experienced it as a shock: “A part of me that I could count on had been taken away from me,” she told bioethicist Professor Frederick Gilbert and his team.

Other studies have highlighted similar processes in some transplant recipients, who may feel they have regained their true identity, or have changed their personality.