A Look Inside Your Surgeon’s Brain, Before the Surgeon Looks Inside You
Scans could reveal which doctors are less skilled. Is it ethical to do so? Is it ethical not to?
Do you know how to use that thing?
Source: Caiaimage, via Getty Images
It was one of those findings that brings on thoughts of the future — both scary and exciting: Scientists showed they could use brain imaging to sort out experienced surgeons from novice students. There’s been a history of extraordinary, often dubious, claims involving brain-imaging studies — everything from finding the seat of love to religion to attachment to one’s iPhone — but this claim looks plausible and potentially useful.
Studying expertise this way became possible once there were imaging devices portable enough to monitor peoples’ brain activity while engaged in complex tasks. And so a team of doctors and engineers set up an experiment to monitor the brains of medical students and doctors performing in a simulator developed to test surgical skills.