New Technology Helps Surgeons Better Map The Brain

Synaptive Medical is building a suite of tools it says will help it create the Google Maps of brain surgery.

Dr. Lloyd Zucker, a Florida-based brain surgeon, likens his job to flying a plane. When he goes into someone's skull to operate, he has to navigate the nerve fibers, and like a pilot flying by buildings, he wants to avoid damage. To avoid a crash, Zucker uses brain scans as maps. To figure out the best pathway, he works with a radiologist to interpret the MRI, a process he likens to something like "flying blind"—not a very encouraging metaphor to hear from someone operating on people's brains. "The scary thing is that if you look at the brain," he said in an interview with a local Florida news station, "all the fibers that exist within the brain, we can't see them. When we go below the surface of the brain, we have no idea what's really there." Yikes.

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