When 19-year-old musician Kira Iaconetti learned of her brain tumor, she called him "a bad joke of the universe." Because the marble-sized ulcer pressed exactly on its auditory cortex, that brain region, which serves to process noises and is thus particularly active, if one hears music or sings.
After all, the young American had an explanation for the dropouts after their diagnosis, the more often they met when she practiced for her appearances as a musical actress. "It was like having a switch in my brain," says Iaconetti. "Suddenly I could no longer distinguish sounds and I did not succeed in singing to the music."
As her doctors at the Seattle Children's Hospital discovered, Iaconetti's tumor has led to an unusual form of epilepsy - the so-called muscogenic epilepsy. On the hospital's website, neurosurgeon Jason Hauptman explains that the epileptic seizures in this case are triggered by listening to music and singing.
Seattle Children's Hospital
MRI image of Kira Iaconetti's brain. The green arrow shows the location of the tumor. On the right of the image, those regions are highlighted in yellow, which are activated when the patient sings.
Awake and sing through the brain surgery
The doctors now faced a tricky task: To free their young patient from the epilepsy that endangered her career as a musician, they had to remove the tumor. However, there was a risk of hurting the surrounding tissue of the auditory cortex and thus also affecting Iaconetti's musical talent.
Therefore, Hauptman and his colleagues considered an unusual approach: During the brain operation, the patient should stay awake and sing. In this way, the neurosurgeon wanted to identify the exact regions he had to bypass when removing the tumor.
Video
Seattle Children's Hospital
After the doctor had opened her skull, Iaconetti was awakened from the narcosis. One after another, she completed several musical tasks she had previously practiced with a music therapist. She was played, for example, tones that she should then sing. She also sang the chorus of one of her favorite songs, the hit "Islands in the Sun" by US rock band Weezer. It says at one point "I can not control my brain" - "I can not control my brain".
In the video, which the hospital published from the procedure, it can be seen how gradually all doctors, nurses and nurses in the OR tune into the vocals and sway to the beat. The good mood was quite appropriate: Iaconetti has survived the operation without any problems. Forty-eight hours later, she reached for her guitar in her sickbed and resumed her favorite song: "We'll never feel bad anymore" - "We'll never go bad again". Neurosurgeon Hauptman assumes that she will not need any further treatment.
Wake-up operations are not uncommon
Brain operations are more often without general anesthesia. In most cases, patients undergo language exercises to ensure that no major brain functions are destroyed during the procedure. They feel almost no pain, because the brain itself is completely insensitive to pain.
In 2015, Slovenian tenor Ambroz Bajec-Lapajne posted a video on YouTube of his brain surgery in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He was also awake and saying the song "Gute Nacht" by Franz Schubert.