1 . As doctors performed surgery on Dagmar Turner’s brain, the sound of a violin filled the operating room. The music came from the patient on the operating table. In a video from the surgery, the violinist was moving her bow (琴弓) up and down as surgeons worked to remove her brain tumor (肿瘤). The King’s College hospital surgeons woke her up in the middle of the operation in order to ensure they did not damage parts of the brain necessary for playing the violin and keep her hand’s functions intact.
Turner, 53, learned that she had a slow-growing tumor. Later doctors found that it had become more aggressive and the violinist decided to have surgery to remove it. “We knew how important the violin is to Turner, so it was vital that we preserved function in the delicate areas of her brain that allowed her to play,” Keyoumars Ashkan, a doctor at King’s College Hospital, said in a press release.
Before Turner’s operation, Ashkan and his colleagues spent two hours carefully mapping her brain to identify areas that were active when she played the violin and those controlling language and movement. Waking her up during surgery then allowed doctors to monitor whether those parts were suffering damage.
Brad Mahon, expert at Carnegie Mellon University, said the basic features of an “awake craniotomy” — the type of brain surgery where patients are awake in order to avoid damage to critical brain areas — have remained largely unchanged for decades. But he said that doctors are now able to map the patient’s brain activity in great detail before the surgery, using an imaging technique called functional MRI. That means surgeons are coming into the operating room with far more information about a specific patient’s brain. That kind of information helps doctors tailor tests to a patient’s particular needs.
1. What does the underlined word “intact”mean in the first paragraph?| A．Strong. | B．Sound. |
| C．Talented. | D．Influential. |
| A．To keep her brain more active when she played the violin. |
| B．To monitor whether her brain had suffered damage severely. |
| C．To recognize the areas related to music and movement precisely. |
| D．To remove the tumor while keeping all function of her brain. |
| A．Doctors are using an imaging technique to monitor the surgery. |
| B．Patients are asleep to protect critical brain areas in a surgery. |
| C．A patient’s language ability couldn’t be preserved before. |
| D．Surgeons can personalize a patient’s operation by mapping his brain. |
| A．Musician joined in her own brain surgery |
| B．Mapping a brain is realized after surgery |
| C．The violinist suffers from a brain tumor |
| D．Doctors perform surgery on a brain |
