Dr. Gary Steinberg

So that I think is the gentlest way.

Other times I've been surprised about brain function is

operating deep in the brain is a part of the brain called the brainstem, which you know well.

It's a small area that connects the thalamus.

Those are the signals coming from the cortex, go through the thalamus to get down to the face, arm, and leg to move the muscles.

And all the sensory information, which comes from the arms and legs and face, goes through the brainstem up to the thalamus and then to the cortex.

In this area, although it's very small, are contained very closely packed fiber tracts and nuclei.

Those are the cell bodies, very important neurons.

And when I trained back in the 80s, we never operated in that area because we couldn't do it safely.

With developments in computer technology and imaging and anesthesia, we can now...

find safe corridors to get into the brainstem.

And sometimes we stimulate for other pathways, not language, but other pathways.

And I'm continually amazed.

This last week, I took out two vascular malformations

and they're not big.

I mean, they measure between eight millimeters and a centimeter, but they can wreak havoc in the brainstem because it's such high-priced real estate, and these had bled.

But I found a safe corridor to go through.

I took it out, and I'm amazed that you hardly set the patients back in some cases because in the past, we would have clobbered the patients doing that.

Right.

Neurosurgery is becoming much less invasive.