Brains!

Due to popular demand, and by popular demand I clearly mean Dina, I have brain stuff to show. For the summer I worked with a funcitonal neurosurgeon. Functional neurosurgery deals more with quality of life issues. While the central nervous system structure is mostly normal, it functions abnormally (like in Parkinson's or people with pain disorders) and people get to neurosurgeons after failing other forms of treatment. My main focus was deep brain stimulation, which places electrodes into the brain to override an abnormal electric signal. It's used mainly in Parkinson's and other diseases that cause tremors, although they're testing it for severe depression. Anyway, this is what the surgical setup looks like:

The thing sticking straight out of the dude's head is essentially a motorized drill. The electrodes are drilled into the brain until they reach the right area, which has its own special electrical signal that the surgeon listens to and recognizes (I've heard it, its like different degrees of audible fuzz, which apparently means something). It turns out to look something like this in the end:

I was too lazy to cut the person out of the picture, but the cool thing is the x-ray. You can see how deep the electrodes go into the brain. The wires under the scalp travel down the neck to a battery pack that lies just over the pec muscles. The battery, mind you, is like $20,000. This stuff is suuuper fancy. Most people don't have a problem with the batteries (they stick out a bit like a pacemaker) but they do get a lifetime of pat-downs at the airport since going through a metal-detector is a bit out of the question.

They do a similar thing for the spinal cord. For people with a lot of nerve pain that can't be treated any other way, they put a similar stimulator over the spinal cord. The current from the stimulator creates a tingling sensation that sort of masks the pain from the messed up nerves. It's a closed surgery - they do everything through needles and tubes - so there are no decent pictures except through x-rays that I can't seem to find. So look! Random brains!


The coverings are still over the actual brain, but those sure are some juicy arteries. :)
And look, brain cancer:

So yeah, that's all i got for now.