Técnicas avanzadas de mapeo cerebral: Adquiriendo la imágen mental necesaria para operar el cerebro (Online advanced brain mapping course – acquiring the mental imagery necessary to operate the brain)

Santander (Online), ES

Attendance type(s): In Person

Event Dates: 03 May—26 Jul 2021

The classical approach to brain tumors consists in the surgical removal of a tumor located within a brain with a definitely fixed functional organization, while preserving structures commonly considered as crucial (e.g. the rolandic, Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas). However, in the last two decades, the integration of four new concepts to glioma management has dramatically changed the approach to these tumors. First, intraoperative electrical stimulation has become the gold standard mapping technique for resection of tumors within eloquent areas, as it had demonstrated to be a safe, accurate and reliable tool to identify and preserve the cortical and subcortical functional boundaries in each step of tumor resection. Second, the inter-individual anatomo-functional variability in the organization of eloquent areas, hence, the necessity to map the brain in order to identify the functional regions in an individual patient. Third, the application of network based models to understand complex cognitive brain functions such as language or memory, therefore, brain connectivity should be taken into account. Fourth, cerebral plasticity, which is the dynamic potential of the brain to reorganize itself following injury.

The acquisition, integration and application of these whole new perspective to treat brain tumors can be very challenging. The volume of information is overwhelming as there are thousands of scientific publications, books, meetings, courses, websites, etc. Some professionals decide to spend a long period in a brain mapping specialized center, however, not everyone has the time or resources to complete that training.

The course was designed at the Hospital Universitario Marqués de Valdecilla and Hospital Virtual Valdecilla in Santander, Spain.

We have divided the course into three sections, which we believe are the fundamental steps to acquire the knowledge to perform brain mapping surgeries:

1-The first part of the course is oriented to the study of the anatomy of the brain white matter.
2-In the second part, the main concepts about brain mapping will be analyzed in detail.
3-Finally, in the third part, surgical mapping challenging cases are presented.

Contact Details

Email: hanguren@hvvaldecilla.es