The Brain Eating scene in Hannibal Lecture. Is It really Possible ?

There are surgeries on the brain where people are kept  awake in the operating room (of course they're numbed) but they don't die.  I would say  its probably is possible. Brain surgery is typically performed on a conscious, but heavily sedated, patient. Furthermore, the brain has no pain receptors  i.e. the brain brain itself doesn't have sensory nerves, but the skull and skin does and so the patient would be given anesthetic .So most of the pain he'd feel would be the cut around his skull. In brain surgeries the patient is kept awake so they can tell the doctor if something is going wrong during the surgery or in another word they keep people awake during surgery to make sure they are not doing any nerve damage . Things like losing sensation  can be felt by this and they can  tells the doctors they might be damaging the wrong tissue. Also because the ringing from the cutting can actually make you go deaf so they put you under drugs,so your ears doesn't register the sound. In the room surgery the medical tools are sterilized in order to prevent the patient from serious infection in his brain.

Craniotomy  and  Labotomy are done like this only,consider this a crude way

 So its possible


Question: The only thing thing that didn't make sense is how he removed the skull. There is no way a scalpel can do that, he'd need a  proper instruments. 
Explanation: But its not shown in the movie,its possible assuming Hannibal Lecture is an expert in cutting (I bet he is) or he does possess sophisticated instrument to do so. 

Again Hannibal Lecture has covered his prey's year before removing the skull so that the person doesn't go deaf  and be active

Question: In real life, wouldn't a person lose consciousness if their brain was exposed?
 Brain surgeons actually do this, (not frying and eating;) but move around on certain things to treat stuff like neurological dysfunction and remove tumors.And it is sometimes done when the patient is awake.



And finally  he was so high at that time so he probably didn't realize he was eating his own brains 

Various Stages Of Death

Whatever happen or may not happen,, but deathly is the ultimate truth. If you are corporeal then one day you will  be a corpse, die and vanish into this earth.
So lets have a knowledge on various stages of death,
Isn't it exciting

The death undergoes three steps before one is finally dead

Clinical death:

It  is the point at which a person's heart stops beating. At that time, breathing and blood circulation stop.

 Brain death :

When the heart stops, oxygen cannot be transported to the brain The brain simply cannot survive for very long without oxygen.When oxygen is withheld beyond  a four to  six-minute threshold, brain death is the result.When brain death occurs, all neurological functions irreversibly cease.The legal time of death is noted at the moment in which a doctor determines that a patient's entire brain has ceased to function.
but It's still possible to resuscitate a person who has undergone clinical death and keep them alive by artificial means of life support, such as a respirator.

 Biological death

when brain has been too long deprived of oxygen, resuscitation is impossible. Then the  biological death will be  established
It is  called somatic death in scientific term
Somatic death is the death-- the permanent, irreversible death-- of an organism as a whole. In humans it is usually after brain death, as the other vital organs are unable to function without the brain. With modern technology, though, one can be brain dead but still have circulation and respiration artificially. In such a case one isn't somatically dead because other organs are still alive. Once artificial support is removed somatic death occurs, because the person is then entirely and completely inactive with regard to brain, circulation, and respiration.