Pinpointing Tourette's Syndrome

Pinpointing Tourette's Syndrome

Though Tourette's syndrome was first studied in the 1800's, it is an illness that has yet to be fully explained by any discipline. Presenting with muscular tics, some of which result in verbal utterances, Tourette's is a condition that is easily characterized. Yet its causes are not so easy to pin down. Though psychiatry and biology have been able to recognize roots other than the demonic possession once thought to cause Tourette's, there are few definitive, precise explanations of its etiology.

As far as neurological diseases go, Tourette's is relatively common: between 2.9 and 4.5 children out of every 100,000 children have it, and that figure may be higher due to mild cases which go undiagnosed (1). The condition is much more prevalent in males than females, and Tourette's is most common present in young people - the condition often disappears in post-pubertal years. The onset of vocal tics most always succeeds motor tics, though most individuals with Tourette's eventually present both. Tics can sustained (and are then called tonic or dystonic), which can result in abnormal posture or gait for Tourette's patients. Behaviors associated with Tourette's include copropraxia, echopraxia (both motor behaviors), coprolalia, palilalia, and echolalia (all verbal) (2).

The neurological causes of Tourette's are not fully understood. About half of patients have "non-localizing, so-called 'soft,' neurological findings suggesting disturbances in the body scheme and integration of motor control". When EEG's are performed on people with Tourette's, the results are often vagule abnormal, yet provide little concrete information to practitioners; the same is true of CAT scans. Additionally, these abnor...

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2. Macalaster College Behavioral Neuroscience Tourette's Syndrome Page

http://www.macalester.edu/~psych/whathap/UBNRP/tourettes/

3. Internet Mental Health

http://www.mentalhealth.com/bookp40-gtor.html

4. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke - "What Cuases TS?"

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/healinfo/disorder/tourette/tourette.htm

5. Department of Neurobiology, Baylor College of Medicine - Movement Disorders Research: Tetrabenazine Study

http://www.bcm.edu/neurol/research/moved/moved3.html

6. HUM-MOLGEN [Human Molecular Genetics] European Server

http://www.informatik.uni-rostock.de/HUM-MOLGEN/documents/abstracts.0049.html

7. "Tourette's Syndrome: A Model Neuropsychiatric Disorder" - Grand Rounds at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health,

http://neuro-www2.mgh.harvard.edu/TSA/medsci/model.html