PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - B Biswal
AU  - J L Ulmer
AU  - R L Krippendorf
AU  - H H Harsch
AU  - D L Daniels
AU  - J S Hyde
AU  - V M Haughton
TI  - Abnormal cerebral activation associated with a motor task in Tourette syndrome.
DP  - 1998 Sep 01
TA  - American Journal of Neuroradiology
PG  - 1509--1512
VI  - 19
IP  - 8
4099  - http://www.ajnr.org/content/19/8/1509.short
4100  - http://www.ajnr.org/content/19/8/1509.full
SO  - Am. J. Neuroradiol.1998 Sep 01; 19
AB  - BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE In Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, PET scanning and EEG suggest an abnormal organization of the sensorimotor cortex and basal ganglia. The purpose of this study was to use functional MR imaging to study activation in the sensorimotor cortex in patients with Tourette syndrome.METHODS From echo-planar images acquired during intermittent performance of a finger-tapping task, the location of activated pixels was determined by means of conventional signal processing methods. In five patients with Tourette syndrome and five healthy volunteers, the number of activated pixels in the sensorimotor cortices and supplementary motor areas were counted. The area over which the activation was distributed was calculated.RESULTS In the five patients, the average number of pixels activated during the finger-tapping task in the sensorimoter cortices and supplementary motor area (69.4 pixels) exceeded that in the volunteers (49.2 pixels). The difference was significant. The area over which the pixels was distributed was significantly larger (25.4 vs 13.8 cm2).CONCLUSION Motor function is organized differently in patients with Tourette syndrome than in healthy subjects.