The clinical and research activities of the Department cover a variety of fields including vascular surgery, oncologic surgery, skull base surgery, spine surgery, pediatric neurosurgery, peripheral nerve surgery, epilepsy surgery, stereotactic and functional neurosurgery and radiosurgery. The Department of Neurosurgery gives lectures in several hour blocks: Neuroscience block lectures to introduce neurosurgery to sophomore students and several hours itemized discussion classes to senior students. The major topics for itemized discussion classes include neuroanantomy, congenital anomalies, oncology, cerebrovascular accident, muscle-bone disease, neuro-trauma. Medical students are given 1 weeks of neurosurgery clerkship in small groups. Subsequent tasks are bedside teaching during regular ward rounds, instructions of normal and pathologic CT and MR findings, and diagnosis/treatment of unconscious and paraplegic patients. Once a week, students present and discuss an assigned case with the staff members or chief residents. Students also observe neurosurgical management first-hand in the operating rooms or later with videotape, in the neurosurgical intensive care unit, emergency room, and outpatient clinic. They are also responsible for attending the ward rounds, neurosurgical morning conferences, seminars and joint conferences with the Departments of Radiology, and Pathology.. Students also have an opportunity to experience these research fields as a selective course. The annual number of surgical procedures included 1,000 in 2006, covering from the classical neurosurgery to the most updated techniques such as epilepsy surgery, radiosurgery and interventional neuroradiology. Most of the faculty members are actively involved in the intra- and extra-academic and research activities including experimental research in the field of cerebral ischemia, epilepsy, brain tumor biology, spine surgery and Parkinson`s disease.