Not a medic...
No, it's possible to pierce the brain without killing the victim. Lobotomy the old way, when it was a fad, for instance (take a rusty screw driver, smash the bone up through the nose, wriggle around a a bit). They usually didn't die, I think.
There's also a case of a railway builder who had his head pierced by a thick rod when the explosive he was arming exploded. The rod entered the skull in one place, and poked out in another. He survived, but suffered permanent personality changes.
There's also a case of a psychotic man who tore out his own eye and push a pencil in until it hit the back of his skull, and I believe I've seen X-ray images of that skull with the pencil. "It itched".