School counselors, ask us questions.

You can ask us questions about Tourette syndrome and other tic disorders by replying to this post. If one of you has a question, you probably aren’t the only one with that question, so we will post it and an answer here so other counselors may benefit, too. If you don’t want your name to […]

TAA awards our Center of Excellence a Community Engagement Grant

The Tourette Association of America awarded the WUSTL Center of Excellence a Community Engagement Grant titled “Training the trainers: Empowering school counselors for outreach to teachers and students.” This project focuses on educator education in the greater St. Louis area. Specifically, we intend to involve a hitherto-underappreciated resource in schools. School counselors are involved in teaching […]

New research on tic timing

Tics happen in a fractal time pattern, even only a few months after tics begin. New work from our lab confirms that tics happen in a time pattern that is fractal. We explain the meaning of those words, the results, and their possible implications on this page. A press release from Wash.U. is available here. […]

Can median nerve stimulation reduce tics?

A fascinating publication from the University of Nottingham describes a non-invasive method that may reduce tics. The idea is that rhythmic input to a brain region can entrain that region to fire in synchrony with the input, and some rhythmic firing patterns seem to inhibit movement. The stimulation was delivered by generating a small electrical […]

Cool research result from the New Tics study

We just published results showing that brain structure, measured by MRI when we first met children with recent onset of tics, helped predict how much improvement there would be in a clinical rating scale for tics when the children returned at the 1-year anniversary of their first tic. Read more about it either here, written […]

COVID-19 Changes to the New Tics Study

We are currently working to adapt the New Tics study so that study visits can occur online, for optimal safety for all due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As further information about online study visits becomes available, we’ll add updates here:  https://tics.wustl.edu/participate/new-tics-study/  Stay safe everyone!

Tic Talk 2020 final survey results

Twenty-seven people responded to our survey asking people what content they wanted for our Tic Talk 2020 meeting (May 2, here at Wash. U.). Thank you! Most respondents (81%) were family members of someone with tics. And … the envelope, please! Here are the main results: Topics you are interested in: Tics at school, working […]

Tic Talk 2020 initial survey results

Below is a brief summary of the results from the first 21 people to take the survey. If you haven’t already responded, we’d love your input to help us design Tic Talk 2020 by taking this short 5-question survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8XT6Z7K Topics you are interested in: Tics and school: 76% How psychological factors or situations influence tics: […]

Help us plan content for Tic Talk 2020

Tic Talk 2020 is on! Saturday, May 2, 2020, at Wash. U. School of Medicine. We want to hear from you about what topics we should cover. Please take this short 5-question survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8XT6Z7K Thank you!

New web address!

The web page for the TAA Center of Excellence at Washington University in St. Louis is now available at tics.wustl.edu—easier to remember, we hope.

TAA Center of Excellence designation

In June of this year, the Tourette Association of America chose Washington University as a Center of Excellence! This designation recognizes the longstanding breadth and depth of expertise in patient care and research of our colleagues here at WUSTL and of the Greater Missouri TAA chapter. Hooray and thank you! However, we know we haven’t […]

Results from chapter grants survey, 10/2018

The results are in! We collected 33 votes (see “Oops” below to check whether your vote counted). We will use this information to guide our application to TAA. Stay tuned by connecting with the chapter or following the WashU Tics page on Facebook or @NewTics on Twitter.  Background The Tourette Association of America (TAA), in partnership with the […]

Which children can suppress tics best?

See this link for information about recently-published research from Wash.U. combined with several other research groups.

Thank you!

With Thanksgiving coming up this week, we would like to thank the many people who have been important to our work on Tourette syndrome and tic disorders here at Washington University. First, thank you to all of you who have been our patients over the years. You have taught us a great deal not only […]