Editorial introductions.

Abstract

Current Opinion in Neurology was launched in 1988. It is one of a successful series of review journals whose unique format is designed to provide a systematic and critical assessment of the literature as presented in the many primary journals. The field of neurology is divided into 14 sections that are reviewed once a year. Each section is assigned a Section Editor, a leading authority in the area, who identifies the most important topics at that time. Here we are pleased to introduce the Journal's Section Editors for this issue. SECTION EDITORS Luis QuerolLuis QuerolLuis Querol (Valencia, 1980) graduated in Medicine at the University of Oviedo, Spain, and completed his residency in Neurology at the Santa Creu i Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona. In 2009, he joined the group of Prof. Isabel Illa where he developed his doctoral thesis on the role of autoantibodies in immune-mediated neuropathies. In 2012, he worked as an associate researcher in the group of Dr Kevin O’Connor, Department of Neurology, Yale University (USA), where he developed projects related to autoantibodies in multiple sclerosis and myasthenia gravis. He completed his PhD in Medicine at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain, in 2013 thanks to studies that identified anti-contactin antibodies in a specific subgroup of patients with CIDP, in what is the first clinically useful marker detected in CIDP. Since then, he has led the auoimmune neurology clinics at Hospital Sant Pau in Barcelona and has continued a fruitful scientific production in the field of autoantibodies and biomarkers in autoimmune neurological disorders. Ichizo NishinoIchizo NishinoDr Ichizo Nishino, FAAN, FANA, is Director of Department of Neuromuscular Research, National Institute of Neuroscience, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry (NCNP). He obtained his M.D. in 1989 and Ph.D. in 1998 from Kyoto University, Japan. After five years of training in clinical neurology and six years of research fellowship, including two years at Columbia University, he was appointed to his current position in 2001. By now, he has published more than 600 PubMed-listed papers in the field, including the reports of gene discoveries for MNGIE and Danon disease, and the report of a new muscle disease – megaconial congenital muscular dystrophy (OMIM: 602541) whose causative was also later identified by his own group. His laboratory functions as a nationwide referral center for muscle disease, providing diagnostic analyses for muscle pathology and genetic diagnosis. His lab receives around 80% of muscle biopsies performed in Japan (1103 cases in 2021) and he signs out all cases. As a result, more than 22,000 frozen muscle biopsy samples have been accumulated in his muscle repository, which is one of the largest collections of the patient's muscles. Currently, Dr Nishino is a Visiting Professor at six universities: University of Yamanashi (Japan), Shinshu University (Japan), Kaohsiung Medical University (Taiwan), Fu Jen Catholic University (Taiwan), Peking University First Hospital (China), and Siriraj Hospital Mahidol University (Thailand). He is also serving as President of Asian-Oceanian Myology Center and Executive Board member in several societies including World Muscle Society. Albert LudolphAlbert LudolphAlbert Ludolph is currently Professor of Neurology, Chair and Director of the Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany and Speaker of the Site Ulm of the German Center for Neurodegenerative diseses (DZNE, Helmholtz Society). He obtained his M.D. from the University of Mainz, Germany, in 1981 and is a boarded neurologist and psychiatrist (education from University of Münster, Germany). His research focusses on translational work in neurodegenerative diseases; his work is mirrored by more than 600 PubMed-listed papers. His specific focus of interests are motor neuron diseases, Huntington's disease and frontotemporal dementias. The Department of Neurology in Ulm is an international referral center in particular for patients with ALS/MND. In the past his research focused on neurotoxicological and neuropharmacological research in humans, but also non-human primates. He was involved and initiated studies of neurogenetics of ALS, of the epidemiology of the disease (established registers in Southern Germany, Egypt and Mongolia), of the definition of the neuroanatomical sequence of events describing ALS and FTD, the development of biomarkers in ALS and FTD and beyond, and several drug trials, including investigator-initiated interventions. In recent years he tried to define the preclinical period of ALS including the role of the hypothalamus and its metabolic consequences.