Alon Y. Avidan

This issue of Seminars in Neurology is the second issue on Sleep and concentrates on sleep disorders specific to neurological diseases. Alon Yosefian Avidan is the Guest Editor of this issue, and the previous issue on Sleep entitled “Introduction to Sleep and its Disorders.” Dr. Avidan is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Michigan, and is Director of the University of Michigan Sleep Disorders Clinic.

I will “reintroduce” Dr. Avidan because we have two issues on sleep disorders and he put such enthusiasm into his assignment. Dr. Avidan received his Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of California and then attended Medical School at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, DC. He also obtained a Master of Public Health from George Washington School of Public Health. Dr. Avidan did an Internship at the Loma Linda University Medical Center and his Neurology Residency at the Georgetown University Medical Center, where he was Chief Resident. He then did a Fellowship in Clinical Neurophysiology and Sleep Disorders at the Cleveland Clinic under Drs. Dudley Dinner and Nancy Foldvary-Schaefer.

Dr. Avidan dedicates these volumes on sleep to his teacher and mentor, Dr. Michael Aldrich. When Dr. Aldrich became ill, he gave his NIH sponsored grant (Sleep Academic Award) to Dr. Avidan. This was a special grant to develop tools and modules to facilitate sleep medicine education for medical students and physicians. Dr. Avidan tells me that the work on this grant was pivotal in his academic career and allowed him to combine his love for education with his interest in sleep medicine. Dr. Avidan has developed educational modules for teaching sleep topics, which are currently on the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Web site. He has also participated in developing SAFER, an education module designed to teach residents about fatigue and alertness management during residency training. At the University of Michigan, Dr. Avidan provides lectures on sleep disorders to the Department of Neurology, the Department of Internal Medicine, the Department of Anesthesiology, and the Department of Otolaryngology. He is also a popular lecturer at the American Academy of Neurology and at the American College of Chest Physicians.

Dr. Avidan is the Chair of the Resident Education Committee in the Department of Neurology at the University of Michigan, and organizes not only a weekly lecture series in Clinical Neurology for Fellows, Residents, and Medical Students, but also organizes weekly clinical conferences, research lectures, and journal clubs in sleep medicine for Fellows, Residents, Faculty, and Staff. He supervises Residents and Fellows in the Sleep Clinics, and supervises Fellows in reading nocturnal polysomnograms and multiple sleep latency tests.

Dr. Avidan is Special Sections Editor, Clinical Cornerstones in Sleep Medicine for Sleep Medicine. He is also Special Sections Editor for WebWatch, Sleep Medicine, and an ad hoc Reviewer for Annals of Neurology, Sleep Medicine, and Sleep. He is the Chair of the Sleep Medicine Education Section for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

This issue of Seminars in Neurology includes topics on sleep and specific neurological disorders as well as the neurocognitive consequences of sleep deprivation, sleep-related headache syndromes, functional neuroimaging of sleep, the physiology and psychology of dreams, and case studies in sleep medicine.

We are delighted and very grateful to Dr. Avidan for taking on this project with the compassion and enthusiasm that he did, and feel certain that our readers will be as grateful to him as we are.