[Verse 1]
Electrodes taped across the scalp and spine,
We're reading signals traveling up the dorsal line,
SSEPs check the sensory corridor's health,
Latency prolonged — the pathway's lost its stealth,
Ten percent amplitude drop, we note the trend,
But fifty percent gone — that's where attention bends,
MEPs ride the corticospinal track instead,
Transcranial pulses sparking motor cortex threads
[Chorus]
S-M-E-B — four modalities to hold,
Somatosensory, Motor, EMG, BAER bold,
Know your latency, know your threshold, know your floor,
Sixty percent MEP drop — run the protocol before,
Check the anesthesia, check the blood pressure read,
Check the temperature, the position, and the lead,
Systematic, stepwise, differential clear,
False positive or real ischemia — the answer lives in here
[Verse 2]
Free-running EMG whispers cranial nerve strain,
Triggered at two milliamps — the facial nerve's still sane,
Vestibular schwannoma, jugular foramen wide,
CN seven's tonic bursts mean retraction's pulled the tide,
No paralytic agents when the EMG's live,
TIVA keeps the signal clean enough to give,
Inhalational agents blur the MEP trace,
Propofol and remifentanil hold the baseline place
[Chorus]
S-M-E-B — four modalities to hold,
Somatosensory, Motor, EMG, BAER bold,
Know your latency, know your threshold, know your floor,
Sixty percent MEP drop — run the protocol before,
Check the anesthesia, check the blood pressure read,
Check the temperature, the position, and the lead,
Systematic, stepwise, differential clear,
False positive or real ischemia — the answer lives in here
[Verse 3]
Phase reversal marks the central sulcus line,
The N20 flips to P20 — motor cortex sign,
Penfield maps with bipolar, slow and deliberate,
Taniguchi's high-frequency train, more accurate,
Afterdischarge crackling — ECoG confirms the spread,
Ice-cold saline quenches what the current fed,
Negative mapping stakes the eloquent border zones,
Subcortical tracts demand respect along their cones
[Bridge]
Awake craniotomy — the patient names a tool,
Scalp block in six territories, Dexmedetomidine cool,
Asleep then awake then asleep again,
Semantic fluency preserved while we resect the stain,
Deep in the basal ganglia microelectrodes descend,
STN fires at eighty hertz — that's where the tremor ends,
GPi patterns, thalamic signatures, reticulata's hush,
Each nucleus speaks a dialect we catalog and trust
[Chorus]
S-M-E-B — four modalities to hold,
Somatosensory, Motor, EMG, BAER bold,
Know your latency, know your threshold, know your floor,
Sixty percent MEP drop — run the protocol before,
Check the anesthesia, check the blood pressure read,
Check the temperature, the position, and the lead,
Systematic, stepwise, differential clear,
False positive or real ischemia — the answer lives in here