The Doctor Who Implanted Himself With a Brain Chip
One of the most impressive stories I came across was the one with Phil Kennedy. I have talked about him before in this series, but not exhaustively. Some researchers question Kennedy’s method (you’ll see what they were questioning shortly), but it can’t be denied that his motives were pure. He wanted to further the researcher and even though the method he came up with risked his life, he did it for the patients. The following is an excerpt from my book, Plugged In:
The question burned in my mind; I wanted to ask him so badly, but I knew he probably got asked about it all the time. So I waited, patiently talking about the other aspects of his work, hearing about his career and how he got involved in BCIs. And I waited as he shared the story of how he decided on the specialty he is currently working in. And I waited as we discussed truly fascinating studies he has completed, and I began to give up hope that he would bring it up until finally he mentioned it: “And, of course, you’ve heard of my own surgery,” he said nonchalantly.
“Oh yeah, I read about it online; it’s pretty crazy. I have to ask you, though, what was the reasoning behind having such an operation performed on you?” I asked, barely able to contain my own excitement.
The answer I received is one I will never forget from the countless interviews I completed for this book. It is the go-to story that I share with friends and family when they ask about the book and what the most interesting part was. And that is the funny part of his answer. It wasn’t thought-provoking or inspiring, or really anything special, but the answer succeeded in summing up in a few words the driving factor behind all of the BCI research I had yet encountered. The motivation for all of the scientists, doctors, post-grads, and patients who devoted and continue to devote thousands of hours to this area of study that often seems so fruitless.
Without a hit of pretension or superiority he answered, “Well, I did it because it needed to be done.”
“I wanted to make sure that we were communicating successfully. All of our patients couldn’t speak, so there was no way of telling how accurate our technology was,” Kennedy explained. “We needed a healthy person, who could speak, to be implanted.” This task turned out to be a problem. Of course, Kennedy couldn’t implant a healthy person, due to the ethical and moral concerns, but he needed someone to test the implants, so, in Kennedy fashion, he chose himself.
He planned it all out, saving up enough money to take care of himself in case something went wrong, talking with his son, and meticulously planning where the electrodes would go, how many there would be, and the procedure to put them there. Kennedy found a neurosurgeon in Belize City and flew down to the 13-bed hospital, 1000 miles south of his Georgia-based company. Most people would be scared or maybe worried about the idea of having four pieces of glass stuck into your brain, but not Kennedy. “For five days after the surgery, I couldn’t speak,” he explained, “but I wasn’t worried; I knew what would happen.”
What he wasn’t expecting, however, was that the neurosurgeon wanted to put the electronics to control the sensors on the inside of his skull. These took up a lot of precious space and ultimately caused the incision to not close entirely. Because of this complication, Kennedy had to have the electrodes removed after a month of recording. He told me, “I wanted to record more, but we were still able to get a lot of valuable data.” Additionally, the extra electronics resulted in Kennedy only being able to implant himself with 2 pairs of 4 wires, 16 total to record from, which netted to 65 single channels. “I was hoping for a couple hundred, but you know, it was better than nothing,” Kennedy described.
After he had the electrodes removed, he spent the next several months analyzing the data: “I would say a phrase repeatedly 10 times, then I would say them silently 10 times,” he said when describing how he would record the data. What he found made it all worth it. “We found that, yes, we could successfully record speech even from those who were locked in.”
The history of people who have experimented on themselves is a long one, starting with Dr. Salk, who gave himself and his own family the first polio vaccine, unsure whether they would become ill, and including Dr. Barry Marshal, who drank a vial of bacteria to prove that bacteria caused stomach ulcers. He later went on to win a Nobel Prize for his work. Kennedy is just another scientist in the long line of those who have risked their lives for the sake of their work. Was it really necessary? Many contemporary neuroscientists argue that Kennedy went a little too far. Whatever the case, Kennedy agrees that no one should do it again: “I have proven that our neuroprosthetics are getting the data we are trying to get,” he explained when I asked him if he expects anyone else to follow in his footsteps. Yet, despite this admittance that implanting healthy people with sensors was a bad idea, he was still upset that he had to cut short his data recording, saying, “It was disappointing because I had to take it out.” And that really sums up the dedication of a man like Phil Kennedy. He did the unthinkable: He experimented on the only thing that he didn’t mind harming, himself. He took the risks of infection, stroke, seizures, and paralysis, and he underwent the surgery anyway. No matter whether scientists and researchers consider Kennedy crazy or reckless, the devotion that drove him to risk everything to further his research for his patients is nothing if not admirable.
Stay tuned to hear more incredible stories of how these interfaces are changing people’s lives and our perception of the human mind. I hope you enjoyed this post — if you want to connect you can reach me here via email admangan2018@gmail.com or connect with me on social: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. If you like what you read and want to learn more about this amazing technology, please buy the paperback or ebook version on amazon! Here is the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H7RJLYC
