PMID: 16536349Mar 16, 2006Paper

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: the childhood co-morbidity that most influences the disability burden in Tourette syndrome

Advances in Neurology
Martha Bridge Denckla

Abstract

ADHD is a complex co-morbidity, as it is heteregeneous in terms of the clinical subtypes, but also in terms of the circuits involved and the level of involvement within those circuits. Specially focusing on the relationship of ADHD to TS, this author's studies have added some neurobehavioral and some anatomical magnetic resonance imaging evidence suggesting the ADHD occurring with TS, appears like "garden-variety" ADHD, at least in the matched research sample. The similarities of neuroanatomical findings in the TS plus ADHD and ADHD groups and their distinctness from neuroanatomical findings in childdren with "pure TS provide some parallels to the observed similarity of functional deficit in TS plus ADHD and ADHD alone groups and the relative lack of functional deficits in children with TS only. More specifically, the results of a decade of this author's research with the approximately 40% of children with TS who are free of ADHD indicate that they are entirely free of the motor control and executive control deficits of children with ADHD alone or TS plus ADHD, but they do have oculomotor control deficits in the initiation of prosaccades, regardless of their ADHD status. The neuroanatomical data in TS only is also of interest b...Continue Reading

Related Concepts

Related Feeds

Attention Disorders

Attention is involved in all cognitive activities, and attention disorders are reported in patients with various neurological diseases. Here are the latest discoveries pertaining to attention disorders.