Why do they call him the neurosurgeon of emotions?
Last year I removed a brain tumor from Yolanda, I operated on her while she was awake and for the first time I administered my test.
What does it consist of?
With the help of artificial intelligence we have created a wide range of images of facial expressions of feelings that the patient recognizes and names while undergoing surgery.
To what end?
By applying a direct and painless electrical stimulus to Yolanda’s brain for a few seconds, we were able to ask her mind whether that area was critical or not for the recognition of emotions in the faces in our test.
As?
The stimulator interrupts the different brain circuits. When you apply it and the patient stops recognizing emotions or makes a mistake, it means that the region is critical.
How did this concern arise in you?
I am a composer, the fact of conveying emotion is something natural for me. But the trigger was when my uncle, a musician, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2013. I was a fourth-year medical student.
Everything was good?
After surgery he moved and spoke perfectly, but he lost all emotional processing, from the ability to be moved by a hug to feeling pleasure listening to Shostakovich’s fifth.
An essential loss.
From there I began to investigate to avoid these types of consequences and I found in Professor Duffau, a world leader in operating on the brain on awake patients and in doing cognitive mapping, the place to hold on to.
What is cognitive mapping?
The map of the areas of the brain that are very plastic and therefore can be removed. Neurosurgery can finally go a little beyond preserving language and movement, which is what it has focused on until now.
How did it feel the first time?
I was full of mixed feelings, I couldn’t get my uncle out of my head. The percentage of patients with brain tumors who are left with deficits in personality, behavior or the way they see the world after surgery is very high.
You try to put an end to it.
Seeing that Yolanda, who had a huge brain tumor that was involving very critical areas such as the cingulum, is now leading a normal life is wonderful.
He has achieved it.
We have shown that the brain is tremendously plastic and that when there is a lesion that grows little by little, it is capable of redistributing brain functions away from the tumor. This allows us to remove areas that were previously thought to be untouchable.
Operates all over the world.
My team and I have left the certainty of working in a hospital. We go wherever they ask us, we do not charge patients, we live off the training we provide.
Are you an NGO with legs?
Yes, and it makes me happy. Science advances by overturning previous paradigms or beliefs, and the best way to carry this message is to help people without asking for anything in return.
And what do you receive?
The most genuine emotion: giving back the illusion of life to another person, going from telling them your tumor is inoperable or you will be left with many consequences, to we are going to fight to give you a normal life back. It’s the only emotion I’m dependent on.
Are patients still put to sleep for brain surgery?
In most cases. And the left hemisphere is usually operated on, because we tend to localize brain functions such as language and movement in one point, but that is a reductionist vision.
A reductionist view of the brain?
Yes, the brain is a complex, self-organized system that constantly adapts to the environment. We operated on a man in Poland with a tumor that no one dared to touch because it was in the insula, a part of the brain with a lot of functionality.
AND?
Little by little, when faced with a growing tumor, the brain shifts the function of the insula to another place, so we were able to clean it without damaging the quality of life according to Duffau’s map of the areas that are plastic.
As a neuroscientist he has researched music and the brain…
We have studied how the brain reacts to different musical styles – just music –, which parts of the brain recruit oxygen to activate. The most primitive part of the movement, the pleasure and the reward were activated with the rhythm of reggaeton.
Do you have a relationship with any patient?
With everyone. Everyone has my cell phone. This is how we conceive the practice of medicine.
