Event-binding and coprolalic tics

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Thomas F. Münte; Professor Dr. Veit Roessner
• Subject Area: Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience ; Clinical Neurology; Neurosurgery and Neuroradiology ; Clinical Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 360279285

This project investigates a characteristic feature of Tourette’s syndrome, coprolalic tics. Its main objective is to test whether coprolalic tics and to a certain degree also curses / expletives in normal language are preferentially integrated into so-called event files (compared to neutral words) allowing for a rapid and quasi-automatic production of these utterances or tics in certain situations. The project aims to demonstrate a preferential integration of coprolalic tics and curses into event files, as they have been defined by Hommel, and a stronger binding of such coprolalia/cursing event files in patients with Tourette’s syndrome compared to typically developing controls. Doing so, we delineate the neural network underlying coprolalia/cursing event file binding using fMRI and fMRI-based connectivity measures. We will also characterize the neurophysiological mechanisms of event file binding with regard to coprolalic tics and curses using EEG. This will be done considering manipulations of explicit and implicit processing of curses and coprolalic tics, as well as the characterization of the potential difference between self-related and other-related utterances with regard to event file binding.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2698: Cognitive theory for Tourette syndrome – a novel perspective