A 60-year-old Italian woman did just that during a procedure to remove a tumour from her left temporal lobe. The neurosurgeon at Ancona's Riuniti hospital said the two and a half hour procedure "went very well". His patient is said to have prepared 90 olives in the space of an hour.

Awake brain surgery, as it is known, is used to treat some neurological conditions such as tumours that affect the areas of the brain responsible for vision, movement or speech. To help the surgeon try to inflict minimal damage on healthy tissue, the patient can be asked questions or engaged in an activity during the operation.