Man plays guitar as doctors operate on his brain

There was actually a story on NPR recently that mentioned such a brain operation where the patient needed brain surgery to alleviate some type of recurring seizure. And he was also a music lover, and so there was an inherent risk the surgeons said that he might lose those abilities.

So rather than take that risk blindly, they had him play a guitar while they were doing surgery on his brain! And if at any point, while they were operating, if his playing ability was affected they would stop operating in that region of the brain.

The kicker was that the side effect of the surgery ( his second ), was that they inadvertently affected a part of the brain that is responsible for 'self-control, judgement' and he ended up becoming a child porn addict, which got him arrested and convicted.

There's about 5 different unbelievable parts to this story, worth a listen if you can find it.

The Human Brain.. continually amazed at how much we still don't know about this part of our anatomy.

Related: Christian Muenzner is an extreme metal guitarist who was diagnosed with focal dystonia in his left hand. He was part of Obscura, one of my favorite metal bands ever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Munzner#Focal_Dyston...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAPpXcvGpps

Listen to this from about 4:00 onwards, and tell me if you'd ordinarily be able to guess that the sounds you hear at 4:20 or so came out of a guitar. I wouldn't, at least not at once.

After the diagnosis, he was faced with a, uh, unreliable left hand. There was nothing to do but take his right-hand "tapping" abilities to insane levels. :)

See Rosemary Kennedy's brain lobotomy (she was the sister of President John F. Kennedy). She was awake and speaking during her brain operation, so doctor could know if he was messing with any important area. "When she began to become incoherent, they stopped." But of course it was too late. She became mentally impaired for the rest of her life. She was lobotomized because her father though it would improve her teenager behavior problems. The brain itself doesn't have Nociceptors (pain sensory neurons), so there is no pain below the skin and meninges area.

Focal dystonia is pretty weird. Different body parts are mapped to different areas of the brain, but "overtraining" certain movements (like this guitarist) can cause that area to spill over into adjacent areas. Resulting in involuntary, task-specific, movements.

Pulled right out of a Grey's Anatomy episode (or vice versa is more likely):

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/wilmer-valderrama-says-good-day...

I'm not sure whether or not I believe this actually happened...