For all the millions spent on producing this year’s Bond spectacular, the producers still failed to take advice from an expert neurosurgeon, it has been revealed.
The movie Spectre brought back the archetypal Bond villain, Ernst Blofeld.
After capturing Bond, Blofeld attempted – without anaesthetic – an innovative surgical procedure, with a robotic drill, aimed at erasing the secret agent’s memory of faces.
According to neurosurgeon Michael Cusimano, of St Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, Canada, the scene was based on good science and poor anatomy.
Writing in the journal Nature, the neurosurgeon says the procedure as depicted in the movie would probably have killed Bond, hitting his vertebral artery.
He says: "Although the filmmakers identified the correct part of the brain thought to be involved in the recognition of faces, the placement of the drill was incorrect.
"The lateral fusiform gyrus is located in the temporal area just in front of the left ear; however Blofeld aimed the drill just below and behind the left ear, where the vertebral artery and bones of the neck are located.
"In terms of today’s precision brain surgery, the villain was nowhere near the brain."
He said it is theoretically possible to erase the memory of faces, creating the condition of prosopagnosia.
He said: "Because the lateral fusiform gyrus involved in memory, it’s theoretically possible to impair a person’s ability to recognise faces.
"There are documented patients that have ‘face blindness’ or prosopagnosia. But in this situation, he was so far off, that had Blofeld been my student, he would have surely failed his neuroanatomy."
Nature 24 December 2015; doi:10.1038/528479e [abstract]
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