Erez says the approach will not replace brain stimulation during surgery, but may provide more personalized understanding of an individual patient’s networks, which, combined with improved cognitive tests, will provide real-time feedback on patient brain activity and enable surgeons to monitor potential impairments to cognitive function during surgery. In addition, the method is predicted to help clinicians understand how brains adapt to the presence of tumors and how well they recover following surgery.

"We aim to offer a range of tests to be used during surgery, depending on the tumor location, the relevant cognitive function, and the lifestyle choices of the patients," he said. "For example, patients for whom physical activity is most important might not want to compromise at all for motor function, so the tests during surgery will focus on that, and this will guide the neurosurgeon in their decisions during surgery. For other patients, executive functions such as planning or reasoning might be most important, even if this means a potential small motor impairment, and the testing during surgery will be tailored for that. Overall, it is the combination of pre-surgery imaging and intraoperative testing (using ‘listening’ to brain activity and stimulation) that will provide the full picture about functional mapping for individual patients."


Implementation of the approach is predicted to be cost-effective and easy, due to the equipment involved largely being used already in surgeries.

Data from 12 patients before, during, and after surgery has already been collected to determine the best tasks for each to perform to obtain the required information, and to help surgeons then optimize the analysis.

Research was supported by the Medical Research Council, the Royal Society and the Brain Tumour Charity.

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