After a man in Bengaluru baffled the world by playing the guitar while doctors operated upon his brain, a man in the US played the saxophone while undergoing surgery. The surgeons successfully removed a brain tumour, while the patient, a music teacher by profession lay playing the instrument as part of a series of cognitive musical tests developed by doctors. During functional MRI (fMRI) scanning, Patient would listen to and then hum back a series of short melodies.
The patient was teaching in a school in New York and working for his Master's degree in music education when he was diagnosed with brain tumour. Although the tumour was not cancerous, it was located in a region that is known to be important for music function. The patient expressed how concerned he was about losing his musical ability, because this frankly was the most important thing to him in his life, not only his…
