So so true. My dad had a brain tumor removed two years ago that stretched 6 inches from behind his ear all the way to the top of his spine. When the doctor originally saw it he said things were looking very bleak but the dude pulled off the surgery and dad is now healthy and happy. Just had his annual follow up scan last week and he is still in the clear.

Didn't they do the same during lobotomy and still screwed it up sometimes? What makes it different now?

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They give you a kazoo. Excellent comment btw

For similar procedures in people who aren’t musicians, they will constantly talk to the person. Ask questions, have them count, or tell them to do something with their hands to asses speech and motor function

Yeah, its so they can know they messed up when you suddenly rip an absolute banger of a solo

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Now the question is what games would everyone play during their surgery. Mine would be halo 3

I play Irish trad on a tenor ukulele. I think they’d fastrack their way through the op to get a break from reels, jigs, polkas, marches, hornpipes and slow airs! Lol

Sexiest song ever.

Or a bit of Baker Street.

It was a 9hr loop of Yakety Sax

Nah we’re hoping it was epic sax man.

Lmao i would probably do this, then get my brain fucked up lol

The idea of playing my instrument (piano), and then suddenly not being able to play anymore due to the doctors poking around in my brain is literally nightmare fuel

That's more of Jotaro's shtick (The lovers)

Nurse, Vaseline!

That's what I was thinking!

Your jaw hurts and your mouth can get a bit numb if you play extra long...

edit: Article says: "[...]played the theme song from the 1970 movie "Love Story," and the Italian national anthem, at various times throughout the surgery."

So no wasn't constantly playing

Op-Chops.

Better than Yakety Sax.

The guy is awake but not fully awake, this is similar to practices done in functional neurosurgery. Often times they are not playing superbly, but they do it the entire time the surgeons are working near sensitive areas because the surgeons can hear minor changes in how they play that indicates what they are doing is influencing neural operations. For bathroom, they have a catheter in and they would be on a diet prior to the surgery to prevent bowel moments during the surgery

A lot of times for awake procedures they are just asking questions to track understanding and speech generation, listening to hear a thickening of the voice or incorrect word retrieval. When they do this procedure asleep, sometimes they insert an electrode in the brain and listen to the sound of the electrical activity to hear if they are influencing brain function(though more commonly they use micro electrode recording just to identify the right location in the brain)

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, I'm an engineer. I just develop tools for functional neurosurgery and observe a lot of neurostimulator placements where they often do stuff like this. Once I saw a guy playing an accordian!

From my limited knowledge and from reading the article, the patient didn’t play the saxophone the whole time, just during integral times.

Similar success without it - maybe but the brain is quite complex and no two brains are the same. Without the patient being awake and playing the sax, thereby activating those neural pathways to check if they are working properly, likely less of a probably of the same success. This helps the surgery team map which nerves are critical.

In the article it says that playing the sax is important to the patient and they wanted to make sure that the patient would still be able to play after the surgery. It’s important that not only surgery is successful but that the patient has a good quality of life. It doesn’t necessarily have to be playing the sax but could be any number of things that would be important to the patient - singing, playing the piano, dexterity in hand movement, etc.

Bathroom - they usually place a catheter so the patient wouldn’t feel the need to #1. Usually before any planned surgery, it’s required to not eat 24 hours before so #2 is unlikely. For craniotomies, usually you can eat a light snack if it’s before midnight.

Because other commenters weren't specific, the point is to ensure that the neurosurgeon stays away from areas of the brain that affect saxophone playing, because he'd abruptly start to mess up before permeant damage is done. In older medical dramas you'd see them do simple cognitive tests to assess the patient at various points through a surgery, this is a more advanced (albeit eclectic) method but is the same idea. Why a sax? Presumably the surgery is done in either parts of the brain associated with musical ability, or hand-eye coordination. I feel personally this is a great idea, I'd love to spend a terrifying surgery say, playing a video game, rather than literally thinking about nothing but the metal knife currently cutting into my soul. A side benefit of making the surgery safer is just gravy in my opinion.

They can test an area before making a cut. They see a section they need to excise they test by touching it, if it dramatically affects speech or motor skill, they look for another spot. Source: neurosurgery nurse explained the procedure before.

why don't you read the article? it explains everything in plain english.

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Playing for nine hours through your own surgery does indeed make this man a saxophone colossus!

Continue prodding that area until he gains super mind powers, and destroys the earth, so I can be done with shitty humans.

They already did. On Wilder Valderrama

Well, in that case you wouldn't play an instrument because it's not something you need (for a career) or want (for hobby or something) so you'd talk with your doctor about alternatives for you. It's a very personalized process, they could just have someone chat with you, do cognitive tests, read a book aloud, play a video game, it's whatever is related to your wants/needs in life.