Facial Expression Recognition of Emotion and Categorization of Emotional Words in Gilles de la Tourette's Syndrome

University Hospital, Clermont-Ferrand

Status: Completed

Conditions: Gilles de la Tourette's Syndrome

Treatments: Behavioral: Facial expression recognition of emotion

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00664300

CHU-0032

RBHP 2007 Jalenques

Details and patient eligibility

About

Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome is a childhood onset inherited neuropsychiatric disorder characterised by the presence of both multiple motor tics and one or more vocal tics (noises), with psychiatric and/or behaviour disorders (such as obsessive compulsive behaviour...).

This disease is associated with an dopamine system imbalance which could be responsible of a specific trouble in the recognition in some facial expression. This has been already shown in Gilles de la Tourette patients with obsessive compulsive behaviour.

We hypothesise that patients with Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome present a dysfunction of voluntary and automatic treatment of emotional information.

The main purpose of this study is to show if patients with Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome present a lack of specific facial expression recognition of emotion and determinate more precisely if this alteration involves the cortical way (high frequency way) or the under cortical way (low frequency way).

Full description

20 patients with Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome compared to 20 healthy paired volunteers.

Study progress (patients):

Inclusion visit :

Psychiatric evaluation Psychological evaluation

Ophthalmic visit

Protocol :

Facial expression recognition test Lexical decision test

Study progress (healthy volunteers):

Psychiatric evaluation Ophthalmic visit Facial expression recognition test Lexical decision test

Enrollment: 60 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Age : >18 years
• Patient with a Gilles de la Tourette 's syndrome such as defined in the DSMIV
• Stability of treatment >1 month
• Mini Mental State > 26
• Affiliation to social security
• Agreement of patients

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with cognitive disorders, dementia, mental retardation...
• Patients with serious neurological pathologies
• Patients with a vision contrast altered.
• Patients who do not understand the words associated with an emotion
• Pregnant women
• Person who participate to an other study

Trial design

60 participants in 1 patient group

2

Description:

One group with Gilles de la Tourette's Syndrome One group with healthy paired volunteers

Treatment:

Behavioral: Facial expression recognition of emotion