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