Dear Colleagues,
I would like to introduce Carol Freysinger as the new Executive Director of the IFCN following the retirement of Clarissa Russell. Carol brings with her over 20 years of association leadership and has managed both national and international societies of all sizes. If you would like to reach Carol, you may email her at cfreysinger@ifcn.info.
We are very pleased to announce that Matt Birkbeck has won the 2020 Herbert Jasper Young Investigator Paper Award for the paper Birkbeck M, Heskamp L, Schofield IS, Blamire AM, Whittaker RG (2020) Non-invasive imaging of single human motor units. Clinical Neurophysiology 131: 1399–1406. The selection was made out of the overwhelming number of 66 applications by the Associate Editors of Clinical Neurophysiology, and approved by the ExCo of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology (IFCN). Under the auspices of the IFCN, Elsevier has established this award to be presented at the next International Congress of Clinical Neurophysiology (ICCN) September 4-8, 2022 in Geneva, Switzerland. The paper award consists of a prize of 5,000 EUR and a certificate.
The ExCo continues to prioritize educational efforts. This time we draw attention to an initiative of TeleEEG, a charity delivering remote diagnosis of epilepsy. TeleEEG is helping to address the stigma, disadvantage, and lack of access to accurate epilepsy diagnosis faced by people in under-resourced countries. Volunteers who are willing to evaluate online EEGs should contact TeleEEG directly, please. For those interested in more information or the full picture, in addition to the website www.teleeeg.org there is a link in the presentation to a chapter in the recent Springer publication 'Innovations in Global Mental Health' which documents the story, thinking and mission and on YouTube.
The Editor’s Choice is this time Clinical Neurophysiology Volume 132, Issue 04: Klaver-Krol EG, Hermens HJ, Vermeulen RC, Klaver MM, Luyten H, Henriquez NR, Zwarts MJ (2021) Chronic fatigue syndrome: Abnormally fast muscle fiber conduction in the membranes of motor units at low static force load. Clinical Neurophysiology 132: 967–974.
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia (FM) are frequent and difficult-to-treat disorders with high societal impact and cost. Their etiology and pathophysiology are still largely unclear. Symptoms of CFS and FM are overlapping, especially muscular fatigue and pain. By using multi-electrode surface EMG, Klaver-Krol and colleagues show in this issue of Clinical Neurophysiology that patients with CFS exhibit an exaggerated increase of muscle fiber conduction velocity with increase of static force, tested in the biceps muscle. Moreover, the authors replicate a previous finding that patients with FM show increased muscle fiber conduction velocity through the tested range of low-to-intermediate static forces when compared to demographically matched healthy controls. Finally, in the CFS group, the number of motor unit potentials conveying very high muscle fiber conduction velocities increased abundantly with force. These findings suggest disordered, i.e., hyperactivated muscle membrane function in CFS and FM patients. The early recruitment of anaerobic high-threshold fast-conducting motor units may have contributed to these findings, and this in turn may be a cause for the rapid muscle fatiguability in CFS and FM. While this does not directly open up avenues to more effective treatment, the gain in pathophysiological insight is a mandatory first step into this direction.
Best wishes,
Walter Paulus
IFCN President