In recent years, a renewed fashion for awake surgery has appeared. In spite of its undoubted utility for scientific research, this technique has several limitations and flaws, usually not debated by parts of the scientific community. We will discuss the aims and limitations of cortical surgery, especially the points relevant to protecting the patient. These objectives should define the guidelines that direct clinical practice. We will review the awake technique as well as various tools used in intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring (IONM) to explore and monitor several cortical functions during long surgeries. The main topics discussed include electrocorticography (ECoG) and cortically recorded evoked potentials (EP), including somatosensory, visual and auditory. Later, we will discuss methods to identify and survey motor functions as motor-evoked potentials, although they are elicited trans-cranially. Finally, we will briefly discuss a promising technique to monitor some language functions in anaesthetized patients, such as cortico-cortical evoked potentials (CCEP). We will address in depth some technical questions about electrical stimulation whose full relevance are not always considered. Finally, we will discuss why, in the absence of empirical facts showing unequivocal superiority in post-surgical outcome, we have to awaken patients, especially when an alternate possibility exists without worst clinical results, as is the case for IONM.

Traditional approaches to focal epileptic surgery rely in the identification and resection of the epileptic zone. However, a significant minority of epileptic patients continue to experience seizures after surgery, a fact that shows how difficult it is to define this concept. In this work we will review some of the recent advances in the use of complex network theory and synchronization analysis in the study of neurophysiological epileptic records which shed new light on fragmented understanding of the epilepsy dynamic we have today. More important would be the potential treatments which could be implemented from the new information and change of perspective gathered by using this methodology, particularly the substitution of the traditional resective surgery in temporal lobe epilepsy patients.

Superior semicircular canal dehiscence syndrome (SSCDS) is described presently as a disorder of the inner ear [1], denoted by the absence of a bony covering of this canal [2]. This acts as a "third window" anomaly, modifying the physiological functions of the inner ear, which generate an abnormal transmission of vibration to the vestibular system, responsible for the clinical symptomatology, such as vertigo, nystagmus, oscillopsia, and disequilibrium prompted by loud sounds (Tullio phenomenon) [3,4]. Furthermore, the Valsalva maneuver stimulates shifts in the pressure of the middle or intracranial ear because of pressure changes in the