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Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome
Published in David Enoch, Basant K. Puri, Hadrian Ball, Uncommon Psychiatric Syndromes, 2020
David Enoch, Basant K. Puri, Hadrian Ball
Latah is a condition that was first observed to occur in Malayans by O’Brien, 1883 and was described by Yap (1952) as “a curious behavioural quirk or aberration, normal but not quite so.” The Latah reaction, comprising a severe startle response, imitative behaviour, automatic obedience and coprolalia, is alleged to occur in cultures with a limited control over their environment. The victim is compelled against his will to imitate the commands and actions of others, although this may be detrimental to him. There are, however, fundamental differences between Latah and Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome. Tics never occur in Latah, and imitative phenomena are often absent in Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome. Coprolalia in Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome is spontaneous, whereas it is always provoked in Latah. Another essential feature of Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome is its onset in childhood, while Latah is never seen before late adolescence and occurs most commonly in middle and old age.
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Published in Anton Sebastian, A Dictionary of the History of Medicine, 2018
Latah Disease Form of neurosis or jumping disease, found in Southeast Asia. Described by George Gilles de la Tourette (1857–1904) in 1884. The patients affected showed involuntary movements and made incoherent sounds and obscene expressions. See coprolalia.
Questions and Answers
Published in David Browne, Brenda Wright, Guy Molyneux, Mohamed Ahmed, Ijaz Hussain, Bangaru Raju, Michael Reilly, MRCPsych Paper I One-Best-Item MCQs, 2017
David Browne, Brenda Wright, Guy Molyneux, Mohamed Ahmed, Ijaz Hussain, Bangaru Raju, Michael Reilly
Answer: C. Dhat is a term used in India to refer to severe anxiety and hypochondriacal concerns associated with the discharge of semen, whit-ish discolouration of the urine and feelings of weakness and exhaustion. Koro involves an episode of sudden and intense anxiety that the penis will recede into the body and possibly cause death. It is associated with a feeling of overwhelming panic. The patient may attempt to prevent retraction. The syndrome is reported in South and East Asia. Latah is hypersensitivity to sudden fright, often with echopraxia, echolalia, command obedience and dissociative behaviour. The syndrome has been found in many parts of the world. Brain fag is a term initially used in West Africa to refer to a condition experienced by students in response to the challenges of schooling. Symptoms include difficulties in concentrating, remembering and thinking. Amok is a dissociative episode characterised by a period of brooding followed by an outburst of violent aggressive or homicidal behaviour directed at people and objects. [P. pp. 2286–9]
The concepts of heredity and degeneration in the work of Jean-Martin Charcot
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2020
He explained that “under the combined influence of peripheral and central excitations, we will see degenerates, these future candidates for mental alienation, executing a series of bizarre actions, designated as ‘Latah, Jumping, and Myriachit’ by foreign authors.” Breitman showed, based on several observations he had collected, that echolalia, coprolalia, and echokinesis could be seen in various types of mental alienation, especially in deliriums, and concluded that “echolalia, coprolalia, and echokinesis accompanied by tics can make up a perfectly independent morbid syndrome with a determined progression, the tic disease or Gilles de la Tourette disease. Patients with this disease are degenerate” (Walusinski 2019).
A peculiar condition: A history of the Jumping Frenchmen Syndrome in scientific and popular accounts
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2018
Tourette syndrome and jumping are not exactly the same, argued Dr. Douglas J. Lanska, although he pointed out there are similarities. “In ‘jumping,’ the key feature is an abnormal startle response, the abnormal reaction is always provoked, and tics are absent; in Tourette syndrome, the key feature is spontaneous motor and vocal tics, although patients with Tourette syndrome may also have an exaggerated startle response” (italics in original; Lanska, 2002, p. 158).16There have been reported cases in which the conditions overlap. Neurologists M. A. J. Tijssen, P. Brown, H. R. Morris, and A. Lees (1999) have written about a variation of Tourette syndrome in which the subjects developed reflex tics not as an exaggerated startle response but after experiencing emotional or physical trauma. Hilary Evans and Robert E. Bartholomew (2009, p. 294) argued that other syndromes—such as latah in Malaysia, miryachit in Russia, imu among the Japanese Ainu, and remenjana in Madagascar—are unlikely related to jumping, because the documentation of these other syndromes tends to be sparse, anecdotal, and generally not convincing.17Neurologists Hulya Apaydin, Gulçin Benbir, and Andrew Lees (2012) recently described a phenomenon observed in Turkey, called huylu, that they believe is not a variation of Tourette’s but is related instead to Jumping Frenchmen syndrome and latah. Neurologists Mirte J. Bakker, J. Gert van Dijk, Astuti Pramono, Sri Sutami, and Marina A.J. Tijssen (2013) recently reported on 12 cases of latah in Indonesia.