A neural noise account of Gilles de la Tourette syndrome

Münchau, Alexander; Colzato, Lorenza S.; AghajaniAfjedi, Azam; Beste, Christian

doi:10.1016/j.nicl.2021.102654

Cited by 16 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 112 publications

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“…Due to its particularly notable motor symptoms, GTS has long been viewed and classified as a movement disorder, and treatment efficacy is indeed usually evaluated in terms of scores focusing on motor output [ 23 ]. However, several lines of research reviewed elsewhere [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ] have reported numerous non-motoric peculiarities of GTS patients, such as hypersensitivity to external stimuli [ 27 ] and general perceptual processing [ 28 ], abnormal sensorimotor interaction [ 29 , 30 ], and a dependence of symptoms on attention [ 31 , 32 , 33 ]. Moreover, the degree to which motor symptoms can be controlled [ 34 ] has been reported to form the basis of cognitive–behavioral interventions, and an increased tendency to create habits has been observed [ 35 , 36 , 37 ].…”

Section: Quo Vadis?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards an Ideology-Free, Truly Mechanistic Health Psychology

Hommel

Beste

2021

IJERPH

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Efficient transfer of concepts and mechanistic insights from the cognitive to the health sciences and back requires a clear, objective description of the problem that this transfer ought to solve. Unfortunately, however, the actual descriptions are commonly penetrated with, and sometimes even motivated by, cultural norms and preferences, a problem that has colored scientific theorizing about behavioral control—the key concept for many psychological health interventions. We argue that ideologies have clouded our scientific thinking about mental health in two ways: by considering the societal utility of individuals and their behavior a key criterion for distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy people, and by dividing what actually seem to be continuous functions relating psychological and neurocognitive underpinnings to human behavior into binary, discrete categories that are then taken to define clinical phenomena. We suggest letting both traditions go and establish a health psychology that restrains from imposing societal values onto individuals, and then taking the fit between behavior and values to conceptualize unhealthiness. Instead, we promote a health psychology that reconstructs behavior that is considered to be problematic from well-understood mechanistic underpinnings of human behavior.

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Section: Quo Vadis?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards an Ideology-Free, Truly Mechanistic Health Psychology

Hommel

Beste

2021

IJERPH

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“… 8 In addition to clinical observations, experimental data also suggest that altered processing of noise may indeed be evident in Tourette syndrome. 8 For instance, reduced sensory and sensorimotor gating in Tourette syndrome 9 is expected to lead to increased sensorimotor noise. Also, some data imply that in patients with Tourette syndrome tics are (mis-)interpreted as relevant action-related information (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Based on such clinical considerations, the ‘neural noise account of Tourette syndrome’ has recently been put forward. 8 This account suggests that the processing of neural noise and adaptation of the signal-to-noise ratio during information processing may be central to understand the nature of Tourette syndrome. 8 In addition to clinical observations, experimental data also suggest that altered processing of noise may indeed be evident in Tourette syndrome.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 8 This account suggests that the processing of neural noise and adaptation of the signal-to-noise ratio during information processing may be central to understand the nature of Tourette syndrome. 8 In addition to clinical observations, experimental data also suggest that altered processing of noise may indeed be evident in Tourette syndrome. 8 For instance, reduced sensory and sensorimotor gating in Tourette syndrome 9 is expected to lead to increased sensorimotor noise.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…more noisy) forward model estimates during action planning 10 suggest that increased sensorimotor noise is central for the understanding of Tourette syndrome. 8 According to the neural noise account of Tourette syndrome, 8 increased noise levels in neural activity not only lead to spontaneous tic movements, 12 but can also explain problems in patients with Tourette syndrome during decisions ‘when’ to carry out a voluntary action, 13 which has repeatedly been shown. 2 , 14 , 15 Moreover, the neural noise account may also explain patterns of concomitantly increased and diminished cognitive functions in patients with Tourette syndrome, as reviewed previously.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Increased scale-free and aperiodic neural activity during sensorimotor integration—a novel facet in Tourette syndrome

Adelhöfer

Paulus

Mückschel

et al. 2021

Brain Communications

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Tourette syndrome is a common neurodevelopmental disorder defined by multiple motor and phonic tics. Tics in Tourette syndrome resemble spontaneously occurring movements in healthy controls and are therefore sometimes difficult to distinguish from these. Tics may in fact be mis-interpreted as a meaningful action, i.e. a signal with social content, whereas they lack such information and could be conceived a surplus of action or ‘motor noise’. These and other considerations have led to a ‘neural noise account’ of Tourette syndrome suggesting that the processing of neural noise and adaptation of the signal-to-noise ratio during information processing is relevant for the understanding of Tourette syndrome. So far, there is no direct evidence for this. Here, we tested the ‘neural noise account’ examining 1/ f noise, also called scale-free neural activity as well as aperiodic activity, in n = 74 children, adolescents and adults with Tourette syndrome and n = 74 healthy controls during task performance using EEG data recorded during a sensorimotor integration task. In keeping with results of a previous study in adults with Tourette syndrome, behavioural data confirmed that sensorimotor integration was also stronger in this larger Tourette syndrome cohort underscoring the relevance of perceptual-action processes in this disorder. More importantly, we show that 1/ f noise and aperiodic activity during sensorimotor processing is increased in patients with Tourette syndrome supporting the ‘neural noise account’. This implies that asynchronous/aperiodic neural activity during sensorimotor integration is stronger in patients with Tourette syndrome compared to healthy controls, which is probably related to abnormalities of GABAergic and dopaminergic transmission in these patients. Differences in 1/ f noise and aperiodic activity between patients with Tourette syndrome and healthy controls were driven by high-frequency oscillations and not lower-frequency activity currently discussed to be important in the pathophysiology of tics. This and the fact that Bayesian statistics showed that there is evidence for the absence of a correlation between neural noise and clinical measures of tics, suggest that increased 1/ f noise and aperiodic activity are not directly related to tics but rather represents a novel facet of Tourette syndrome.

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Neural representations of statistical and rule‐based predictions in Gilles de la Tourette syndrome

Takacs,

Toth‐Faber,

Schubert

et al. 2024

Human Brain Mapping

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Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) is a disorder characterised by motor and vocal tics, which may represent habitual actions as a result of enhanced learning of associations between stimuli and responses (S‐R). In this study, we investigated how adults with GTS and healthy controls (HC) learn two types of regularities in a sequence: statistics (non‐adjacent probabilities) and rules (predefined order). Participants completed a visuomotor sequence learning task while EEG was recorded. To understand the neurophysiological underpinnings of these regularities in GTS, multivariate pattern analyses on the temporally decomposed EEG signal as well as sLORETA source localisation method were conducted. We found that people with GTS showed superior statistical learning but comparable rule‐based learning compared to HC participants. Adults with GTS had different neural representations for both statistics and rules than HC adults; specifically, adults with GTS maintained the regularity representations longer and had more overlap between them than HCs. Moreover, over different time scales, distinct fronto‐parietal structures contribute to statistical learning in the GTS and HC groups. We propose that hyper‐learning in GTS is a consequence of the altered sensitivity to encode complex statistics, which might lead to habitual actions.

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A neural noise account of Gilles de la Tourette syndrome

Abstract: Highlights A neural noise account on Tourette syndrome is conceptualized. We outline how neurophysiological methods can be used to test this account. The neural noise account may lead to novel treatment options.

Cited by 16 publications

References 112 publications

Towards an Ideology-Free, Truly Mechanistic Health Psychology

Towards an Ideology-Free, Truly Mechanistic Health Psychology

Increased scale-free and aperiodic neural activity during sensorimotor integration—a novel facet in Tourette syndrome

Neural representations of statistical and rule‐based predictions in Gilles de la Tourette syndrome

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