An important recognition, the «Pisa Sleep Award», was awarded to Luigi Ferini Strambi, head of the Sleep Medicine Center of the IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital in Milan and full professor of Neurology at the Faculty of Psychology of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele Universityas well as coordinator of the forum Courier Health dedicated to sleep.
The “Pisa Sleep Award”, a prize established by Piero Salzarulo and Luigi Murri in 1994, is a consolidated tradition, sponsored every two years by the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Pisa. During the ceremony, on 13 and 14 June at the Palazzo della Sapienza in Pisathe recognition will be given to Professor Luigi Ferini Strambi for his studies, in particular on disorders with altered motor activity during sleep, such as restless legs syndrome, REM sleep behavior disorder and nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy.
«The purpose of the “Pisa Sleep Award” is to recognize a European scientist whose career has been dedicated to the study of sleep, including its physiology and disorders, and whose contribution represented an exceptional advance in sleep medicine» we read in the presentation of the event. On the occasion of the award ceremony, leading experts will discuss insomnia, memory and cognition, differences between the sexes, sleep and movement. A round table will take stock of “Present and future of sleep medicine and research in Europe”.
The format of the event, «11 minutes of sleep», offers the opportunity for a direct debate on some of the central themes of the research. All speakers are invited to speak strictly in an 11 minute space; each presentation is followed by a 9-minute discussion, in which the other speakers are invited to comment on the speech, while the remaining time is dedicated to the speaker’s response. At the end of each session, there will be time for questions from the audience. Professor Ferini Strambi will hold a lecture on June 13th at 6 pm keynote lecture on the topic «Abnormal motor activity during NRem (non Rem) and Rem sleep». This will be followed by the presentation of the prize.
Ferini Strambi, graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Milan and specialized in Neurology at the same University, undertook a period of research in the United States in 1984 as postdoctoral fellow at the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Since 1988 he has held the position of medical director and head of Sleep Medicine Centeruntil 1998. Subsequently, he collaborated on several occasions with the Sleep Disorders Center at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
He is the author of 430 scientific articles published in indexed journals and numerous chapters in national and international books. He is also field editor of the magazine Sleep Medicineas well as a member of the editorial board of the magazines Sleep Disorders, Behavioral Neurology and European Journal of Neurology. Past president of the World Association of Sleep Medicine and of the Italian Sleep Medicine Associationis a member of several scientific societies, including the Italian Society of Neuropsychopharmacology, the Italian Society of Neurology, the European Sleep Research Society, the European Academy of Neurology and the American Academy of Sleep Disorders.
In 2018 the book «Oxford Textbook of Sleep Disorders», published by Luigi Ferini Strambi and Sudhansu Chokroverty, were awarded the «BMA Medical Book of the Year Award» and the first prize in the Neurology category, during the official BMA (British Medical Association) Medical Book Awards ceremony, in London.
Ferini Strambi’s studies on altered motor activity during sleep have focused in particular on role of geneticsin an attempt to clinically characterize the three pathologies (restless legs syndrome, REM sleep behavioral disorder and nocturnal epilepsy of the frontal lobe), trying to identify possible strategies for preventive and thus avoiding neurodegeneration which can occur even several years after the first symptoms. In particular, REM sleep behavior disorder can be predictive of the onset of dementia with Levy bodies, Parkinson’s disease and multiple system atrophy.
In the editions preceding the «Pisa Sleep Award» was awarded to Michael Jouvet (1994), Elio Lugaresi (1996), Alexander Borbély (1998), David Parkes (2000), Torbjörn Åkerstedt (2002), Peretz Lavie (2004), Giulio Tononi (2006), Irene Tobler ( 2008), Claudio Bassetti (2010), Mario Giovanni Terzano (2012), Pier Luigi Parmeggiani (2014), Pierre Maquet (2016), Tarja Helena Stenberg – Porkka – Heiskanen (2018), Dieter Riemann (2020) and Chiara Cirelli (2022 ).
