Cheryl Richards edited Treatment.md  about 8 years ago

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An open label trial of cranial electrical stimulation (CES) treatment was provided to 42 children with TS who were less than 12 years old \citep{25546850}. The patients applied electrodes to their earlobes when they went to bed so that they could receive the treatment on a daily basis for 24 weeks. Treatment was provided for 60 minutes and they could go to sleep if they wanted. Only one child dropped out before the completion of the study. The mean YGTSS score significantly decreased from 26.3 when they were initially seen to 11.4 after 24 weeks of treatment. fMRI scanning was optional and only 8 subjects completed the scans before and after treatment. Independent component analysis with hierarchical partner matching was used to examine functional connectivity among regions within the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuit followed by Granger causality to examine effective connectivity. After the CES treatment this subsample had stronger functional activity and connectivity in the anterior cingulate cortex, caudate and posterior cingulate cortex and weker activity in the supplementary motor area. These results are preliminary, since an RCT is required to rule out spontaneous improvement.  The strong association between tics and epilepsy was discussed in the "Symptoms and comorbidity" section \citep{26597416}. The possible role of autonomic dysfunction in both epilepsy and Tourette Syndrome was discussed in detail, along with the use of biofeedback a summary  of attempts to  electrodermal activity (EDA) biofeedback  to improve modulation of sympathetic nervous system activity. treat both conditions.  EDA biofeedback resulted in more than half biofeedback, which consistered  of the TS subjects having 12 sessions over 4 weeks, produced  at least a 50% reduction in seizure activity with maintainence over a period seizures in more than half  ofyears for  the subset epileptic subjects. Based on seizure diaries  that were followed and kept by a subset of the patients,  these improvements were maintained over a period of years. These  results werereportedly  replicated in a 2014 study by  another study. group.  However, an attempt to use a similar EDA biofeedback protocol with TS subjects \cite{24674962}  found that, although, tic activity was reduced during biofeedback periods, this improvement did not generalize to times when the that TS  patients were not receiving in  the biofeedback. This approach active biofeedback group had difficulty reducing their sympathetic activity.