BACKGROUND/AIM Spasmodic dysphonia (DS) is a disabling speech disturbance appearing as the consequence of dystonic vocal folds contraction. Its intermittent appearance in the laryngeal muscles causes vocal function discontinuation. The quality of life of these patients is significantly disturbed. Surgical and a medical therapy appear to be inadequate and unsuccessful ones of no steady improveme...

CASE PRESENTATION Upon arrival in Beijing, China from London, England in 2008 a previously healthy 56-year old man developed a regular spasmodic cough for the duration of his stay in the city.

BACKGROUND Although mentioned in most series, "pure" autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxias, except spinocerebellar ataxia type 6, are difficult to differentiate on clinical grounds. OBJECTIVE To describe Portuguese families with a peculiar pure form of dominant ataxia that, to our knowledge, has never been documented before and in which cerebellar signs are preceded by spasmodic cough. PATI...

OBJECTIVES To study the prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity assessed by the use of a structured clinical interview in a large, representative sample of patients with spasmodic torticollis (ST) and to test the hypothesis that social phobia would be highly prevalent. METHODS In a consecutive cohort of 116 patients with ST treated with botulinum toxin overall psychiatric comorbidity was studie...

Spasmodic dysphonia (SD) is a primary focal dystonia of unknown pathophysiology, characterized by involuntary spasms in the laryngeal muscles during speech production. We examined two rare cases of postmortem brainstem tissue from SD patients compared to four controls. In the SD patients, small clusters of inflammation were found in the reticular formation surrounding solitary tract, spinal tri...

Idiopathic spasmodic torticollis is a form of focal dystonia aVecting the neck. It is characterised by involuntary repetitive or sustained neck muscle contractions leading to abnormal head postures and impaired control of head movement. With an estimated prevalence of 9/100 000 spasmodic torticollis is the most common focal dystonia. Onset peaks around the age of 40 and there is a female prepon...

Idiopathic spasmodic torticollis is a form of focal dystonia aVecting the neck. It is characterised by involuntary repetitive or sustained neck muscle contractions leading to abnormal head postures and impaired control of head movement. With an estimated prevalence of 9/100 000 spasmodic torticollis is the most common focal dystonia. Onset peaks around the age of 40 and there is a female prepon...

Spasmodic dysphonia (SD) is a task-specific focal dystonia of unknown pathophysiology, characterized by involuntary spasms in the laryngeal muscles during speaking. Our aim was to identify symptom-specific functional brain activation abnormalities in adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD) and abductor spasmodic dysphonia (ABSD). Both SD groups showed increased activation extent in the primary sens...

OBJECTIVES Focal dystonia of the head and neck are associated with a loss of kinesthetic acuity at muscles distant from the dystonic sites. That is, while the motor deficits in focal dystonia are confined, the associated somatosensory deficits are generalized. This is the first systematic study to examine, if patients diagnosed with spasmodic dystonia (SD) show somatosensory impairments similar...

Vestibular findings in a group of 35 patients with spasmodic torticollis without other otological or neurological symptoms were reviewed. The most consistent abnormality, present in more than 70% of cases, was a directional preponderance of vestibular nystagmus in the dark in a direction opposite to the head (chin) deviation. Rigidly clamping the head to a rotating chair did not abolish the dir...