Wired Sci­ence have got a great short film that fol­lows two peo­ple who have deep brain stim­u­la­tion devices implanted in their brains to treat tremors.While most peo­ple assume brain surgery is all pre-planned before­hand, for many treat­ments for cog­ni­tive or behav­ioural func­tions, the sur­geons need to wake up the patient after they’ve open their skull to make sure they’re tar­get­ing the right place (and avoid­ing dam­ag­ing essen­tial functions).

In this case, they wake the patients up dur­ing neu­ro­surgery so they can test out their move­ments while stim­u­lat­ing dif­fer­ent areas of the brain, in a trial and error style.

Video of deep brain stim­u­la­tion neu­ro­surgery and ‘The Brain of an Alzheimer’s Patient’.

via Mind­Hacks