Intraoperative Brain Mapping

and objects going in and out of the body. Necessary parts of anatomy maybe be taken out by accident. A person might not wake up from the sedatives that they get prior to the operation.

As a student of psychology I have read about this procedure a few times during my studies. It seems possible that the doctors who performed this type of surgery may have been more interested in stretching the boundaries of medicine and gaining notoriety versus the actual care of the patient. The term psychosurgery describes a surgical intervention to change another person’s mood, thoughts, or behavior. This procedure was coined the frontal lobotomy. The procedure involved cutting the major connections between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain. Lobotomies became part of a new age treatment for neurological diseases in the early 20th century. The original procedure, also known as a leucotomy, involved an injection of alcohol into

Neurosurgery is set apart from every other field because it pertains to the most important part of the body: the brain. If a person’s entire body works perfectly with the exclusion of the brain, that person will still never be able to function normally. There is a wide variety of neurological defects that can arise in any one of us including aneurysms, tumors, nerve damage, and strokes. (__) The sheer fragility of our minds demands highly skilled surgeons to fix

The first thing to do before an awake brain surgery starts - is to find out if you need one or not. That’s where an MRI comes in, they’ll put you through it and the machine scans your body to help the surgeons know if your situation is serious enough for an awake surgery. If you do need an awake surgery - they’ll schedule you first of course - but even after that in the pre-op room a speech specialist will talk to the patient or have you identify an image. Once you get into the surgery room, they will sedate you and numb your scalp, then they’ll let you awake and start the surgery. During the surgery - the surgeon will talk to you or ask you simple questions (e.g. What’s your name?). Soon, after the surgery, they’ll sedate you again. Once you

For more than a century ago, clinical observations had shown the brain to be multifocal as well as two sided, providing different functions. Knowing that the corpus callosum would have to be severed, in 1961 neurosurgeons Philip Vogel and Joseph Bogen and the rest of the team including Roger Sperry and his graduate student Michael Gazzaniga wondered and communicated about cutting short communications to lower seizure rates by cutting the corpus callosum. The process and technique of this brilliant team of one student and neurologist went on to be know as the “split brain” where personality and intellectuality of the patients seemed to be hardly affected after the surgical procedure was performed. The Split Brain Phenomenon may sound crazy and impossible, however it has been done surgically to help alleviate epileptic seizures. The split brain surgery also referred to as corpus callosotomy is a far- reaching procedure involving the hemisphere, made up of the left and the right side of the brain’s bond within the corpus callosum.

During the procedure, that patient is anesthetized, either under general anesthesia (such as for trauma, strokes, or a number of other procedures) or local anesthesia so that the patient may be awake for the procedure (such as for some tumor removals or seizure treatments to tissue damage that would impair the patient or electrocorticography). The patient’s head is shaved, the incision site is marked, and the surgical area is sterilized. The patient’s head is placed in a device to hold it in place during the procedure. A craniotomy drape is placed over the patient, leaving the patient ready for the procedure.

The split-brain procedure was primarily done in order to stop epileptic seizures. Epileptic episodes can range from a short loss of consciousness to severely thrashing arms and legs uncontrollably. Scientists and researchers are now aware of the fact that seizures are caused by an abnormal discharge of electrical impulses throughout the brain that interrupts normal brain patterns. They were also able to figure out that severing the corpus callosum prevents the electrical discharge from dispersing through the

Now that we’ve talked about the steps they’ll take for an awake brain surgery. We now have to know why you’ll need one in the first place. Mostly, awake surgeries depend on your situation, such as a tumor, brain concussion, seizures, etc. Doctors might even do x-rays or an MRI to find out what’s wrong and if it’s worth an awake craniotomy. But there are also times when you don’t think you need an awake surgery, but there’s no choice. “When trying to move a brain tumor that might affect the speech part of your brain. A sedated surgery is no option.” Dr. Emery Brown - who is a professor of Anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital -

Epilepsy was conceptually defined in 2005 as a disorder of the brain characterised by enduring predisposition to generate epileptic seizures (1). This disorder is approached with such fear and trepidation by the medical and lay person alike, due to it expression of violent muscular activity in most cases. Much work and study has been done to understand that pathological process, and one etiology that is of surgical importance is temporal lobe epilepsy. Although this is not a common cause of epilepsy, it certainly has the potential for a good outcome if managed surgically. In this review the detailed surgical approach and management of this condition will be discussed, with a case presentation to highlight the topic.

The Broca’s area is associated with the outputs of language and how the production of language is produced. Having to choose an area to lose in the brain will both have major setbacks to language and the way we communicate with others. Looking how both the areas process language you can see which one would be more beneficial than the other area. If one area would have to be gone from the brain, it would be the Broca’s area. Even though I am one to like talking a lot, it would be hard to talk about anything without being able to understand what the other person is saying. Looking how both areas function you can see that with losing the Broca’s area you would be losing the production of language. If I were to choose the Wernicke’s area instead, I would be losing the ability to understand language inputs. Losing the Broca’s area would mean that I would lose the ability to produce language, but would still can understand language because I wouldn’t be losing the Wernicke’s area. Even with losing one area, the processing of language has to do with both, due to the fact that the Wernicke’s area and the Broca’s area is interconnect with a bunch of nerve fibers called the arcuate

Several conditions of the nervous system and brain do not respond properly to aggressive interventions, like drug therapy or surgery. Additionally, the surgical interventions of the neurosurgeon and the drug therapies used by medical neurologists can increase the risks of serious complications, and side effects on the overall health in the long run.

Anesthesia has redefined surgery. It has converted surgery from a form of medical butchery into a highly professional, lifesaving event, that millions of people undergo, worldwide (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2014, para 4). The history of anesthesia is not the most picturesque as it was rather gruesome and cost the lives of many. However, these deaths were not in vain as anesthesia led to surgery seemingly becoming an everyday ordeal, in which its astounding impact on society has increased exponentially, especially in recent years. Although it may appear as if anesthesia is a fairly simple concept, the science

You will be positioned on the operating table in a manner that provides the best access to the side of the brain to be operated

Patients should be able to respond, be aware of surrounding (Liddle, 2013). In this case, Ajay after roused, reported of feeling cold dry mouth, cried and complained of pain, which shows that he was awake. Whereas, level of consciousness vary with depths and time as it depend on many factors such as anaesthetics, duration of surgery and patient’s pain stimulation (Sinclair & Faleiro, 2006). As stated above, opioid is known as respiratory suppressants and it produce analgesia via receptors. Those are two factors that affect on consciousness level. Additionally, Sinclair & Faleiro (2006) also found temperature contribute in delaying recovery of consciousness. Neurological and respiratory disturbance affects brain tissue. This changes explain Ajay’s temperature is hypothermia with 35.0oC thus affect his consciousness level. Nevertheless, other study argued that long period of time patients been in theatre and anaesthesia leads to hypothermia (Liddle, 2013). Furthermore, Ajay has symptoms of thirst, drowsiness and confusion, which could be caused by uraemia results in dehydration in loss of blood or fluid during surgery (Sinclair & Faleiro,

During the early 1970’s something called Computed Tomography (CT) Scanning was introduced into medicine. The CT scans were able to provide the first clear image of the brain and brain tumors. This was done by using X-Rays which provided doctors with images of a section or “slice” of the brain. In the following decades, CT Scanning becomes more and more refined and is now also being paired with other imaging techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which was invented by Damadian in 1977 (Filler, 2009).