Objective To assess whether trainees can learn and implement the operational definition of interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology (IFCN), based on six morphological criteria, and whether its implementation improves their diagnostic performance and inter‐rater agreement (IRA). Methods Seven trainees evaluated a balanced dataset of 70 EEG samples containing sharp transients (35 from patients with epilepsy and 35 from patients with non‐epileptic paroxysmal events). The gold standard was derived from video‐EEG recordings of the habitual clinical episodes. The trainees individually reviewed the EEGs, blinded to all other data, in two successive training sessions, three months apart. The second session was preceded by a teaching module about the IFCN criteria, and the trainees implemented them during the second reading session. Results By implementing the IFCN criteria, trainees significantly improved their specificity (94.29% vs. 77.14%; p=0.01) and overall accuracy (81.43% vs. 64.29%; p=0.01) for identifying IEDs. Sensitivity also improved but did not reach the level of statistical significance (77.14% vs. 60%; p=0.07). IRA improved significantly from fair (k=0.31; 95% CI: 0.22‐0.40) to high‐moderate (k=0.56; 95% CI:0.46‐0.67) beyond‐chance agreement. Significance Implementing the IFCN criteria significantly improves the diagnostic performance and IRA of trainees in identifying IEDs. Teaching the IFCN criteria for IEDs will increase specificity in clinical EEG and avoid over‐reading, the most common cause of misdiagnosing epilepsy.

Background: COVID-19 was declared as a pandemic by World Health Organization on March 11, 2020, and still constitutes a serious health problem affecting millions of people across the world. The evaluation and follow-up of ongoing and/or newly developing neurological involvement after recovery from COVID-19 are important. This study aims to reveal post-COVID-19 neurological symptoms and risk factors for their development. Methods: Patients over the age of 18 years who applied to centers, at least 4 weeks after COVID-19 infection and agreed to participate in the study were included in this cross-sectional study between January 20 and March 15, 2021. The patients were evaluated face to face, and their sociodemographic data, medical history, post-COVID-19 neurological symptoms, treatments, and Beck Depression Inventory scores were recorded. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 23 for Windows software package (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL). Results: Four hundred patients were included in this study, an average of 108+5.12 days had passed after the onset of COVID-19. The rate of post-COVID-19 neurological involvement was 73.3%, and the top 3 most common symptoms were headache (47%), myalgia (43%), and sleep disturbance (39%). Having depression (OR: 4.54, 95% Cl :1.88-10.96), female gender (OR:2.18, 95% Cl :1.36-3.49), hospitalization (OR: 2.01, 95% Cl :103-3.64), and usage of favipiravir (OR:2.07 95 Cl :1.15-3.72) were determined as independent predictors of developing prolonged neurological symptoms. Conclusion: The long-term consequences of COVID-19 remain uncertain. It should be remembered that neurological symptoms are very common in post-infectious patients and long-term follow-up may be required in the management of this condition.

Background Face and facial expression recognition abilities have been frequently evaluated in the assessment of social cognition disorders in patients with MS. Investigation of the effect of new difficulties emerging in the field of face recognition with the widespread use of masks during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on patients with MS may make new contributions to the literature. Material and methods The study included 44 patients with relapsing–remitting MS (RRMSp) and 51 controls who were matched to the case group in terms of age and education level. The Benton face recognition test-short form (BFRT-sf), Beck Depression Inventory, a close-ended 13-item survey on face recognition difficulties due to mask use during the pandemic was administered to all groups. Results In the RRMSp, the mean disease duration was 8.2 ± 5.6, the mean EDSS score was 1.2 ± 1.0, and the mean MOCA test score was 27.23 ± 2.08. The mean BFRTsf was 19.9 ± 2.4 in the RRMSp and 21.6 ± 1.8 in the healthy controls.Twenty-five percent of RRMSp and 4% of the healthy controls required people to remove their masks to be able to recognize their faces. Improvement in face recognition difficulty over time was reported as 80% in the healthy controls and 34% in the RRMSp. Conclusion RRMSp had worse performance in masked face recognition and required removal of the facial masks more often than healthy controls to recognize the faces. RRMS patients did not show as much improvement in recognizing masked faces over time according to the onset of the pandemic as healthy controls.

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MATERIALS AND METHODS Study PopulationConsecutive patients over 18 years of age who were admitted to the stroke unit between the dates April 2017 and April 2019 due to AIS or TIA were included in the study. All of the patients were whites. Patients without diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain or fluid attenuation inversion recovery (FLAIR) sequence, patients with space-occupying intracranial lesions (such as tumors), as well From the