Meet Abhishek Prasad, the man who played guitar during his brain surgery

A 37-year-old musician played guitar while a nerve disorder in his brain was stimulated at a private hospital in the city recently, said a neurosurgeon on Thursday.

"We conducted a live brain circuit surgery on Abhishek Prasad to stimulate his left hand fingers even as he strummed his guitar in the operation theatre on July 11," Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain Hospital neurosurgeon Sharan Srinivasan told reporters here.

Post-operation, a beaming Prasad, who hails from Bihar, but settled in this tech hub, displayed proficiency by playing guitar at ease nine days after his skull was drilled and operated upon to set right the disorder in his four fingers.

Touted to be the first such brain circuit surgery in the country, the delicate operation involved passing an electrode 8-9cm through a 14mm hole into the brain and stimulating a specific nerve to confirm the right location and prevent any side-effect or complications to other circuits.

"After reconfirming the target location, a radio frequency lesion was made using a RF ablation machine. As the surgery was on, Prasad was conscious and played guitar, as the disorder used to manifest when he tried to play the instrument. The live feedback was important for us to ascertain the exact location to be lesioned," noted Srinivasan.
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