Neuropsychological abnormalities in Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome

Seven patients with Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome underwent an extensive psychological and neuropsychological examination. On psychological examination, it was found that consistent with previous reports these patients had a high incidence of Verbal IQ-Performance IQ discrepancies on the Revised Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, and had average mental arithmetic but poor written arithmetic. On neuropsychological examination, no single measure was performed poorly by all subjects, but there was a high incidence of poor performance on several measures from the Halstead-Reitan Battery. High frequency of abnormal performance for age was observed on the Category, Trail Making and Tactual Performance Tests. In addition, the patients had an interesting pattern of average auditory attention span but poor visual attention span. The pattern of visuomotor and visuospatial deficits was discussed with respect to possible underlying mechanisms.