Dr. Jorge Juncos MD, Associate Professor of Neurology, Emory University, Atlanta, USA is this year’s guest speaker and recipient of the Callaghan Medal. The title of Dr. Juncos’ lecture will be The spectrum of Tourette Disorder: From semiology, to treatment, and new genetic vistas.
After residencies in Internal Medicine (1977-1980, Columbia, NYC) and Neurology (1980-1983, MGH, Boston), Dr Jorge Juncos began his work in TS as a fellow at the NIH Experimental Therapeutics Branch (1983-88), under Dr Thomas Chase, the first Scientific Director of the Tourette Syndrome Association (TSA-US), followed by two years of neurochemistry and neuropathology with Professor Yves Agid at the Hôpital Pitié Salpêtrière in Paris, where Gilles de la Tourette first described the syndrome. He served on the TSA-US Medical Advisory Board and is now the Medical Director of the TS Association of GA. He directs the Emory TAA Center of Excellence, which cares for more than 1000 children and adults with TS. He has participated in multiple pharmacologic and physiologic investigations in TS. In a study of thalamic deep brain stimulation in adult TS, he and colleagues found improvement in tics, but not overall quality of life. He advised Dr S Finkelstein on her Ph D thesis on the ‘linguistics of coprolalia in TS’ (1988). Working with paediatricians and psychiatrists he has developed a vertically integrated, interdisciplinary clinic– a core topic of his talk. Two years ago he organized the first statewide ‘Adult TS Social group’, exploring variables that influence the long-term outlook of TS and its principal co-morbidities, ADHD and OCD. The integrated clinic and the ‘social group’ have shown that prognosis depends on the patient’s experience in the social environment.
The spectrum of Tourette Disorder: From semiology, to treatment, and new genetic vistas.
Symptoms of TS consist of motor and phonic tics and select behavioural and neuropsychologic comorbidities. There is a growing but partial understanding of its pathophysiology, including neuronal interactions within cortico-thalamic-basal-ganglionic circuitries understood to modulate the essential motor and compulsive aspects of the illness. This framework begins to dovetail with new genetic insights into the disorder and its therapies
Dear colleagues, members and friends of the Irish Neurological Association,
