The British Society for Clinical Neurophysiology (formerly the EEG Society) awards an annual prize of £1000 for the best presentation given by medical doctors in training (senior house officers, specialist registrars, academic posts and equivalent grades or positions outside the UK), clinical scientists in training, basic scientists undertaking undergraduate or post-graduate degrees, Clinical Physiologists (Neurophysiology) up to 5 years after qualification (equivalent to previous ECNE pt I).

The prize is called The Adrian Prize in honour of the first President of the EEG Society (1943-1951), Professor ED Adrian OM, FRS (later Lord Adrian).

Suitable candidates for the prize will be asked to declare their interest when submitting an abstract for one the Society’s Scientific Meetings. Adjudication of each presentation will be made by a Panel of the Society’s Officers using a scoring system designed to assess the originality, scientific methodology, presentational quality and importance of the work. Any submission accepted for a Scientific Meeting is eligible for consideration.

Adjudications will be made at each Autumn, Spring and Summer Scientific Meeting. The candidate with the highest score will subsequently be notified and invited to receive The Adrian Prize from the President of the Society at the Annual General Meeting the following October.

The prize has been awarded to:

2020 Dr Stuart Maitland (Ultrasound-guided Motor Unit Scanning EMG (UltraMUSE))

2019 Dr Birgit Pimpel (Feasibility of language related ERP recordings fro stereo-EEG in children)

2018 Dr Graham Blackman (Predicting outcomes in anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis using EEG)

2017 Dr James Alix (A novel impedance spectroscopy device for examination of the tongue in motor neurone disease)

2015 Dr Verity McLelland

2014 Dr Daniel Konn

2013 Dr James Burge

2012 Dr Simon Freilich

2011 Dr John McHugh

2010 Dr K Shields

2009  Dr N Nirmalananthan

2008  Dr Michael Alexander

2007  Dr David Allen

2006  Dr Yong Chern Lee

2005  Dr Ptolemaios Sarrigiannis


Lord Edgar Adrian (1889-1977)
Professor of Physiology at Cambridge University 1937-51; studied muscles and nerve cells, first performing crude measurements of nerve impulses by using valve amplifiers, and later devising more accurate instrumentation for such assessments. He accidentally proved the presence of electricity within nerve cells, after attaching electrodes to a toad's optic nerves and then noting increased impulse activity each time he happened to step across the animal's field of vision. He confirmed Berger’s early observations on alpha rhythm in the EEG, work done in collaboration with Matthews in Cambridge, and published in Brain in 1934. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1932, shared with Sir Charles Sherrington, for his work on nerve impulses.