Precise Brain Mapping will Reduce the Chance of Damage as a Result of Tumor Resection

Dr. Yaara Erez from the Alexander Kofkin Faculty of Engineering and the Leslie and Susan Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar Ilan University, in collaboration with researchers and physicians from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge University Hospitals, and the University of Oxford in the UK, succeeded in distinguishing the Frontoparietal Network (FPN), responsible for the cognitive activity, from other networks of the human brain. Researchers placed electrodes on the brains of patients undergoing a conscious craniotomy for tumor resection and measured their brain activity while performing simple verbal tasks and cognitively demanding tasks. The researchers detected high gamma activity during the performance of complex tasks that allowed them to reliably distinguish the FPN from other networks. Currently, during brain surgeries, electrical stimulation is used to map areas responsible for motor and verbal functions that, unlike FPN, are confined to well-defined areas. Dr. Erez and her colleagues' findings pave the way for more precise brain mapping, thus reducing the risk of damage to crucial brain areas during tumor surgeries.

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