Mark George writes: As many of you know, the ISTS will have an unofficial 'meeting within a meeting' at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, to be held at the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto, Canada, May 27-31, 1998. At the Switzerland meeting I was asked to help integrate TMS work into the program. Because of the late start we were unable to book rooms and plan for a truly satellite meeting as we will likely do in the future.
I have been in contact with Trey Sunderland who is in charge of the scientific program. We have agreed on the following general plan where we will have an 'unofficial meeting' on Saturday, May 30. We will start with a workshop around noon on advanced TMS techniques (paired pulse stimulation,etc.) Alvaro Pascual-Leone and Harold Sackeim will be helping to organize this. This will be followed by an afternoon symposium on 'The Antidepressant Effects of rTMS: Who, How and Why,' chaired by Harold Sackeim. I am co-chair and we will announce further details later. Following this symposium they normally have a poster session and I have asked that all TMS related posters be presented here (not on Thursday or Friday).
I would encourage all who can to make it to the meeting. The science is top-notch, and last year this society was very open to TMS research. They have also opened up the scientific program somewhat. Instead of having all of the symposia by invitation only, they will now also have 50% of the symposia from 'unsolicited recommendations'. Thus, the program is open for anyone interested to organize and propose another TMS-related symposium. I think that it should not be held on Saturday afternoon (in order not to dilute our small numbers).
The deadline for submission of symposia and posters is December 1, 1997. For information about the meeting please feel free to contact the Secretary-Treasurers Office 904 953 2842, 904 953 7117 (fax), or maggie@mayo.edu. You can also get information from the website.