An electrode with adjacent optical fibers for measurements during navigation and radio frequency lesioning in the brain was modeled for Monte Carlo simulations of light transport in brain tissue. Relative reflected light intensity at 780 nm, I 780 , from this electrode and probes with identical fiber configuration were simulated using the intensity from native white matter as reference. Models were made of homogeneous native and coagulated gray, thalamus, and white matter as well as blood. Dual layer models, including models with a layer of cerebrospinal fluid between the fibers and the brain tissue, were also made. Simulated I 780 was 0.16 for gray matter, 0.67 for coagulate gray matter, 0.36 for thalamus, 0.39 for coagulated thalamus, unity for white matter, 0.70 for coagulated white matter and 0.24 for blood. Thalamic matter has also been found to reflect more light than gray matter and less than white matter in clinical studies. In conclusion the reflected light intensity can be used to differentiate between gray and white matter during navigation. Furthermore, coagulation of light gray tissue, such as the thalamus, might be difficult to detect 2 using I 780 , but coagulation in darker gray tissue should result in a rapid increase of I 780 .