Kevin J. Black edited Treatment.md  about 8 years ago

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### Other treatment  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 must be viewed as  preliminary, since an RCT is required to rule out spontaneous improvement. The A study finding a surprisingly  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 a summary of attempts to use  electrodermal activity (EDA) biofeedback to treat both conditions. EDA biofeedback, which consistered consisted  of 12 sessions over 4 weeks, produced at least a 50% reduction in seizures in more than half of the epileptic subjects and also produced changes in Contingent Negative Variation Variation,  which is modulated by changes in peripheral autonomic activity. Based on seizure diaries that were kept by a subset of the patients, these improvements were maintained over a period of years. These results were replicated in a 2014 study by another research group. In contrast, when a similar EDA biofeedback protocol was used with TS subjects \cite{24674962}, TS patients in the active and sham biofeedback groups were not able to reduce their sympathetic activity. Despite this, both the active-beiofeedback and sham-control groups had significant decreases in tic frequency and obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms, and improvements in quality of life obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms related to OCD symptoms.