Antonio De Salles

Antonio De Salles, MD, PhD

Dr. De Salles was born in Brazil to a family of medical doctors, professors, and writers. He decided to become a medical doctor at age 6. Brain surgery became a passion during his medical school years, for him, the brain was the most fascinating organ, at a time when heart and other organ transplants were in the news as the main surgical achievements of his generation.

After his training as a Neurosurgeon in Brazil, where Dr. De Salles saw the amazing results of Psychosurgery, he came to the United States where he studied at the Medical College of Virginia and at Harvard University specific techniques to manipulate the brain function electrically, chemically and through ionizing radiation. Again in Psychosurgery, in Sweden, Dr. De Salles recalled his early love for the modification of brain function to improve psychiatric patients. Additionally, pacemakers for the brain were being developed from the advances they made in Cardiology. He further developed his knowledge of manipulating brain function with pacemakers to treat Movement Disorders, Epilepsy, Chronic Pain and novel applications such as depression and morbid obesity during his laboratory research.

His worldwide neurosurgery learning adaded to the UCLA opportunities in Neuroscience, he became a professor of neurosurgery and a worldwide recognized Neuroscientist and Neurosurgeon. He worked in Los Angeles for 25 years developing techniques to treat brain disorders with minimalistic surgery, robotics and modern operating rooms with the most advanced imaging capabilities. He surgically treated over one thousand patients with functional diseases of the brain such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, depression, dystonia, variety of tremors, central pain and more than 8,000 patients with brain or spine tumors while at UCLA where he became Emeritus Professor of Neurosurgery and Radiation Oncology.

During his 40 years of academic neurosurgery, Dr. De Salles authored hundreds of scientific articles and seven academic neurosurgery books. After his retirement from UCLA, Dr. De Salles returned to Brazil to help the improvement of Neurosurgery in his motherland. His first science fiction novel and the thriller "Why Fly Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Psychosurgery in my Brain Please!", now translated to four languages opened up his interest teaching the public at large neuroscience through laisure reading.

He has dedicated his writing to bringing public awareness of modern brain surgery using robotics, imaging and neuromodulation to improve human behavior, and the most difficult diseases of the human nervous system, such as vascular diseases and tumors. His novel writing is easy reading for the layperson understand brain function and the importance of brain interventions to enhance human life. After the success of The Brain of the Player, Love, and Soccer, he is now finishing the Titles, The Musician's Brain and The Brain Tumor and the Divinity.