How does neurosurgery work? How does the surgeon identify which parts of the brain are okay to cut and which one’s arent’t? Isn’t everyone’s brain structured differently?

Question

With other surgeries I guess it’s possible for the surgeon to identify the different tissues, nerves, and blood vessels through an X-ray or CT scan and plan the surgery accordingly

But with the brain, doesn’t everything look like a big blob of brain tissue? How can the surgeon tell what part of the brain performs what function and what’s safe to cut so that he can access the tumor? How would he avoid a Phineas Gage type outcome?

In: 33

Answer 1

The anatomy of the brain is pretty much the same in all.. every part of the brain is named and has a function for example the hippocampus is for memory, the occipital lobe is where vision processing is done etc..
There are predetermined surgical approaches to a part of the brain designed to cause minimum injury. Meaning, if I have to access a particular region in the brain, there is a described approach to reach there which involves cutting tissue which causes least damage based on previous studies of the brain and it’s functions.
Some parts are inaccessible, there ain’t really anything u can do for that.. but with what he have today, we can approach certain areas and do good justice.