Artificial intelligence is making impressive advances in medicine. But there are things even the most adept robotic surgeon won't grasp.

Performing surgery is not a "House, M.D." quandary in which we sift through massive amounts of data stored in our memories to arrive at the best solution - the kind of thing computers do very well. It's not like playing chess, or Go, or even diagnosing cancer from a mammogram. When it comes to surgical interventions, figuring out what to do is only the first step. The real challenge is doing it.​​

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Gray Matters is not simply a history of neurosurgery. Dr. Schwartz has written a book that is part memoir and part biography of his profession. Common problems, such as head trauma, gunshot wounds, brain tumors and strokes, are illustrated through the stories of real patients. Some cases are Dr. Schwartz’s own, tweaked to protect anonymity; others are of historical figures and celebrities. He covers huge amounts of territory, including the deplorable case of Eva Perón’s lobotomy, the brave new world of brain-computer interfaces, and the ominous implications of cutting-edge neuroscience for conventional notions of free will.

Most of the ships in a bottle you see in souvenir shops are built first, before inserting them into the bottle. Imagine having to assemble the ship, piece by piece, by working through the neck of the bottle with the bottle intact. That’s what it’s like to perform neurosurgery, a life-and-death technical exercise in which the surgeon must exert his or her will on the external world, working at the bottom of a deep, narrow corridor with a margin of error measured in millimeters. The key to success relies not just upon a detailed understanding of the brain’s anatomy but also on careful preparation. 

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