In this conversation with Dr. Vanessa Milanese, we cover the importance of anatomy in neurosurgery and explore her intriguing work in both fields – and how they cross-informed one another. Vanessa is a functional neurosurgeon at A Beneficencia Portuguesa Hospital in São Paulo, Brazil and holds an adjunct assistant professorship of neurosurgery at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. We talk about her stellar work in combining her neurosurgical activity with anatomical work – which involves dissections of the white matter of postmortem brains using the Klingler’s method. We will talk about the rare community of neurosurgeons involved in similar activities, world-wide and the big influence Dr. Al Rhoton had on the field and on Vanessa’s career. We thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and learned a lot – and we hope you will enjoy it as much as we did! Thank you so much for tuning in! References we talked about in the episode: Holanda, Vanessa M., Michael S. Okun, Erik H. Middlebrooks, Abuzer Gungor, Margaret E. Barry, John Forder, and Kelly D. Foote. 2020. “Postmortem Dissections of Common Targets for Lesion and Deep Brain Stimulation Surgeries.” Neurosurgery 86 (6): 860–72.  https://journals.lww.com/neurosurgery/abstract/2020/06000/postmortem_dissections_of_common_targets_for.14.aspx Holanda, Vanessa Milanesi, Maria Cristina Chavantes, Xingjia Wu, and Juanita J. Anders. 2017. “The Mechanistic Basis for Photobiomodulation Therapy of Neuropathic Pain by near Infrared Laser Light.” Lasers in Surgery and Medicine 49 (5): 516–24.  https://www.thieme-connect.de/products/ejournals/pdf/10.1002/lsm.22628.pdf Middlebrooks, Erik H., Ibrahim S. Tuna, Leonardo Almeida, Sanjeet S. Grewal, Joshua Wong, Michael G. Heckman, Elizabeth R. Lesser, et al. 2018. “Structural Connectivity-Based Segmentation of the Thalamus and Prediction of Tremor Improvement Following Thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation of the Ventral Intermediate Nucleus.” NeuroImage. Clinical 20 (October): 1266–73. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6308387/ Middlebrooks, Erik H., Sanjeet S. Grewal, and Vanessa M. Holanda. 2019. “Complexities of Connectivity-Based DBS Targeting: Rebirth of the Debate on Thalamic and Subthalamic Treatment of Tremor.” NeuroImage. Clinical. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6543122/ Ferreira, Tancredo Alcântara, Jr, Erik H. Middlebrooks, Wen Hung Tzu, Mateus Reghin Neto, and Vanessa Milanesi Holanda. 2020. “Postmortem Dissections of the Papez Circuit and Nonmotor Targets for Functional Neurosurgery.” World Neurosurgery 144 (December): e866–75. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1878875020320969?via%3Dihub Additional Resources we talked about: Mayo Functional Neuro Course 2024:  https://ce.mayo.edu/functionalneuro2024 Scaniverse app for 3D brain reconstruction: https://apps.apple.com/br/app/scaniverse-3d-scanner/id1541433223?l=en-GB Rhoton's book: https://shop.lww.com/Rhoton-Cranial-Anatomy-and-Surgical-Approaches/p/9781975226879 Stênio Holanda Filho Q&A book: https://www.dilivros.com.br/livro-neuroanatomia-pratica-e-ilustrada-questoes--e-respostas--3d-9788580531527,h18213.html Deep Brain Stimulation: A case-based approach https://academic.oup.com/book/29505