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Investigators from University of Oxford, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’, London, UK, performed a prospective surveillance study in children with NMDAR-Ab-mediated neurological disease reported from Nov 2010 to Dec 2011.

Investigators from University of Washington, Seattle, WA; Harvard U, MA; St Louis, MO; Atlanta, GA; Northwestern U, and Shriner’s Hospital, Chicago, compared the development of school-aged children with single-suture craniosynostosis (sagittal, metopic, unicoronal, lambdoid) and unaffected children.

Investigators at University Children’s Hospital, Inselspital, and Universities of Bern, Geneva, Basel, and Zurich, Switzerland compared long-term outcome of children (1 month-16 years) and young adults (16.1-45 years) with arterial ischemic stroke (AIS) using prospective data from the Swiss Neuropediatric Stroke Registry and the Adult Bernese stroke registry, between Jan 2000 and Dec 2008.

Investigators at Emory University, Atlanta, GA; Stony Brook, New York; University of California, San Diego; and other centers determined the type of physician who makes the Rett syndrome (RTT) diagnosis and identified risk factors for delayed diagnosis.

Investigators from University Children’s Hospitals in Bern, Zurich, Aarau, and multiple other centers in Switzerland evaluated prospectively the epidemiology, manifestations, and treatment of all full-term neonates with neonatal arterial ischemic stroke (NAIS) and born 2000-2010.

Investigators at Departments of Child Neurology, Neuroscience, Biostatistics, Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey studied the parameters for prediction of epileptiform abnormalities in the EEG of 148 children diagnosed with ADHD, according to DSM-IV criteria, aged between 6 and 13 years (mean 8.76 +/- 1.26; 25.7% female).

Investigators from the Division of Emergency Medicine, Sports Medicine, and Department of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, PA, and Sports Medicine, Somerset, NJ, performed a retrospective cohort study of 247 patients ages 5-18 years with concussion referred from July 2010 to Dec 2011; 81% of patients showed a vestibular abnormality on initial clinical examination.

Investigators from Fujita Health University, Toyoake, and National Epilepsy Center, Shizuoka, Japan, studied the pathogenic role of HHV-6B in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE). Of 75 intractable MTLE patients, 52 had mesial temporal sclerosis (MTS) and 23 were non-MTS patients.

Investigators from New York University, NY, studied 14 patients with congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA), compared to 10 patients with chronically deficient sympathetic activity (pure autonomic failure), and 15 normal age-matched controls.

Investigators from University of Sydney, Australia; John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK; Imperial College, London, UK; and other centers, studied infectious, immune-mediated/autoantibody associated and unknown forms of encephalitis, including frequencies, clinical and radiological phenotypes, and long-term outcome.

Investigators from University of Oulu, Finland, evaluated the diurnal and seasonal occurrence of the first febrile seizures (FS) in 461 children in a population-based study of 1522 children.

Investigators from Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, evaluated the effects of neuropsychological activation (NPA) tasks on epileptiform discharges (ED) in adolescents with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) and in comparison with hyperventilation and photic stimulation.

Investigators at Pitie-Salpetriere and Robert Debre Hospitals, and other centers in France, evaluated consecutive patients referred for suspected Kleine-Levin (KLS) syndrome, detailed differential diagnoses, and examined characteristics of patients with prolonged (>30 days) episodes.

Researchers at Children’s Hospital, Boston, studied the comparative effectiveness of acute medication regimens for the prevention of ED visits with migraine.

Investigators at University of Copenhagen, Denmark, evaluated whether 4 weeks of 30 min daily treadmill training with an incline may facilitate corticospinal transmission and improve control of the ankle joint in 16 children, aged 5-14 years, with cerebral palsy.

Researchers at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and University “Roma Tre,” Rome, Italy, studied the neural substrates of the previously identified social play-suppressant effects of methylphenidate (MPH) and atomoxetine, drugs widely used for the treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Investigators from the University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL, and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, report 2 children who presented with FIRES and prolonged AED-resistant status epilepticus.

Investigators from Children’s National Health System Washington, DC, USA: Harvard University, Boston, USA; Leeds Teaching Hospitals, UK; and other international centers review a series of patients with MRIs selected from IRB-approved leukodystrophy biorepositories to identify MRI patterns for recognition of early-onset Aicardi-Goutieres (A-G) syndrome and scored for a panel of radiologic predictors.

Pediatric Neurology Briefs (PNB) has been published monthly since 1987 as a continuing education service designed to expedite and facilitate review of current medical literature concerning pediatric neurology. In 2015, PNB is relaunched as an open access, peer-reviewed, journal with an expanded editorial board. PNB has a new website and content management system capable of organizing peer-review and providing improved indexing, DOI assignment, and online full-text article view. Digitization of back issues, archiving, and inclusion in PubMed are future goals. The new online open access PNB aims to reach more physicians, researchers, and other healthcare providers with highlights of the latest advances in pediatric neurology and commentaries by specialists in the field.

The outcome of 19 infants with complications of Arnold-Chiari malformation and meningomyelocele was reviewed at the Depts.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN reviewed the records and radiograph data of 292 patients (47.3% male) seen between 1989 and 1999 with a diagnosis of intracerebral cavernous malformation (ICM).

Presenting features, co-morbid conditions, treatment, and outcome of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) in a consecutive series of children are reported from Department of Paediatric Neurology, Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, UK.

Investigators at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, describe 12 children with Panayiotopoulos syndrome (PS) misdiagnosed as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

Investigators at Istanbul University and Mersin University School of Medicine, Turkey, assessed the occurrence, prevalence and clinical characteristics of primary headache in pediatric patients, aged

Epileptologists from Children's Hospital, Boston, and UCLA, California, discuss approaches to the differential diagnosis of Lennox Gastaut syndrome (LGS) and identification of a possible underlying etiology.

The prevalence and characteristics of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) among first grade children were determined in a representative Midwestern US city.

Investigators at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, and Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain, assessed the prevalence and characteristics of arachnoid cysts in a cohort of 220 patients with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC).

Epileptologists at University of Toronto and University of Saskatchewan, Canada, evaluated the complexity of epilepsy patients transitioned from child to adult care between tertiary centers compared to patients transferred from the community.

Clinical characteristics of childhood-onset restless legs syndrome (RLS) were studied in 32 (5.9%) patients,

Five cases of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) are reported from the California Department of Health Services, Richmond, CA.

The transcription of cytokine genes in peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL) of 23 children (mean age 3.2 years) with influenza (mostly type A) complicated by encephalopathy (11 patients) or febrile convulsions (12 patients) was compared with systemic cytokine responses in 23 (mean age 5.0 years) with influenza but without neurologic complications, in a study at Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan.

Records of 38 patients, 23 boys and 15 girls (ages 3 months to 16 years [42% ages 3-12 months]), seen between 1990 and 1997 with proven herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE), were reviewed retrospectively to determine the diagnostic reliability of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) results, in a study at the Neuropediatric Service, Hopital Saint Vincent de Paul, Paris, France.

Six children aged 3.3 to 5.5 years (5 girls and 1 boy), of 26 admitted with acute muscle weakness to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, over a 5 year period (1992-97), were diagnosed with tick paralysis.

Investigators at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, PA, report a 3-year-old female who had presented with seizures at 10 weeks of life.

Investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and centers in Frankfurt, Germany, examined 22 patients with the classic phenotype of ataxia-telangiectasia for neurocognitive features, and compared patients with early stage cerebellar disease (group AT-I) versus those with late stage cerebrocerebellar disease (group AT-II).

Investigators at Universite de Lille Nord de France, and other centers in France, report the identification of a novel causative gene for spinocerebellar ataxia 21, an autosomal dominant disorder, initially mapped to chromosome 7 and designated as SCA21.

Neurosurgeons at Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, address the proposed utility and negative impact of guidelines proposed by the American Headache Society (AHS), in conjunction with the Choosing Wisely initiative of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Investigators at Nihon University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan, report two patients with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome (WHS) who have a strong affinity for music, not previously described as a feature of this syndrome.

Investigators on behalf of the MS Study Group of the Italian Neurological Society performed a third cognitive assessment on 48 of 63 patients with childhood or juvenile MS in the original cohort and compared with 46 healthy controls.

Staff members at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, and University of Iowa Children's Hospital, Iowa City, report a healthy 22-year-old man with a focal encephalitis following varicella-zoster virus (VZV) reactivation without rash, triggered by varicella vaccination required for employment in a hospital

Investigators from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, PA, conducted a retrospective chart review of 48 children (average age at presentation 8.1 yrs, range 5-14 yrs; 73% male) diagnosed with “Alice in Wonderland” syndrome (AWS) or “Alice in Wonderland”-like syndrome between 1993 and 2013.

Investigators at UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London, UK, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the effect of cognitive effort during a working memory task as a trigger of myoclonic jerks in 15 unaffected siblings (10 female; age range 18-65 years, median 40 yrs) of 11 patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (6 female; age range 22-54 yrs, median 35).

Investigators at Tel Aviv University, Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital, Schneider Children's Medical Center, and other centers in Israel report the clinical presentation of acute encephalopathy in 11 children and the long-term sequelae of 8 who initially survived an episode of thiamine deficiency.

The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Genetics present a recommended clinical genetics diagnostic approach to the evaluation of intellectual disability or global developmental delays.

Investigators at Newcastle University, UK, and Hopitaux de Paris, France, report 5 patients from 3 unrelated families with a strikingly homogeneous clinical entity combining congenital myasthenia with distal muscle weakness and atrophy resembling a distal myopathy.

Investigators from Ankara Pediatrics, Turkey, evaluate the clinical symptoms and etiology in records of 53 patients (32 female) diagnosed with pseudotumor cerebri (PTC) in a child neurology department between 2005 and 2012.

Investigators at Robert Debre Hospital and Paris Diderot University, Paris, France, and Basildon University Hospital, Essex, UK, conducted a prospective study of 101 children aged 6-18 years presenting to the ED of a tertiary hospital with moderate to severe headache and focal neurologic deficit with focal brain disturbance.

Investigators at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, report the sensitivity and specificity of the pediatric EMG in the diagnosis of myopathic disorders in patients

Pediatric neurologists at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, report an 8-year-old boy with rapid cognitive decline after a year-long course of valproate in varying dosages for myoclonic and atypical absence seizures.

Investigators from Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Research Program, Malawi; University of Liverpool, UK; Michigan State University, USA; Vancouver General Hospital, Canada; and Ophthalmology Centers in Edinburgh, UK, review the evidence for associations between retina and brain neurovasculature, and the extent to which malarial retinopathy reflects cerebrovascular damage.