
The Bengaluru Lab That Taught an AI to Read the Brain—And Is Now Helping Surgeons Navigate Its Most Dangerous Territory
Dr. Laina Emmanuel was not supposed to be a neurotech entrepreneur. She was a clinical neuropsychologist, the kind who spends her days in hospital wards, assessing patients with brain tumours, traumatic brain injuries, and neurodegenerative diseases. She watched neurosurgeons plan their operations by staring at black-and-white MRI slices, mentally reconstructing the three-dimensional architecture of the brain, and making their best guess about where the tumour ended and the healthy tissue began. She watched them get it wrong—not often, but often enough. A few millimetres in the wrong direction, and a patient who came in for a tumour resection left the operating theatre unable to speak, or walk, or recognise their spouse.








