Deaf People with Tourette's...

[Pootertoot]

Lisa (EffMe) and I had a very interesting debate regarding her deaf people with tourette's thread. I say that deaf people with Tourette's would not and could not sign the curses because: a) Sign Language has to be more complex than just being controlled by the speech center of the brain, and b) Whatever Tourette's affects would not directly affect the other mechanisms involved.

She believes that sign language is directly controlled by the speech center of the brain because a person that is born completely deaf treats sign language as we treat speech.

So the question is twofold:

1) Is sign language controlled by the speech center of the brain, or is it more complicated?

2) What does Tourette's affect, and would a deaf person with tourette's sign the curses?

I imagine the second part of the second question would be the most hard to find an answer to.

I know I may be slightly reductionist in this post ("speech center of the brain") but I'm really fascinated by this and would like to know.

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Censored, Because I'm a Responsible Moderator, who fucks children in the ass.

[Meatball]

and After we've solved that dilema we can tackle the age old mystery of whether a woman with Epilepsy can give a BJ without biting the guys willy off.

[HordeKing1]

LOU and LISA - What fascinating questions!

I'll try to keep an answer to these complex questions to a reasonable length.

First, some background about tourettes syndrome.

Tourettes Syndrome (TS) is a nuerological disorder characterized by mild to severe motor tics and articulations. It should be noted that involuntary cursing, called coprolalia, is the rarest form of TS. Much more typically, tourettes involves facial tics ranging from eye blinking, to lip biting to grimacing, head jerking, etc.

There is no cure for tourettes, but when symptoms are severe, medications are sometimes prescribed. The vast majority of people with TS do not take medication. The medications (such as haloperidol) work by affecting the levels of dopamine (and other nuerotransmitter) in the brain.

There is a strong genetic component to Tourettes and a 50% likelihood of it being transmitted to a child. Interestingly, 3 out of 4 people with tourettes are male. There is a high correlation between tourettes and siblings with OCD.

Symptoms of tourettes almost always occur before age 18.

The US Department of Health estimates that there are about 100,000 Americans with full blown Tourettes, and that 1 in 200 have some partial form of the disorder such as chronic multiple tics or transient childhood tics.

Psychological problems don't cause TS but therapy can help a sufferer deal with the issues caused by the expression of symptomaology.


Dr. B Schaeffer, a clinical psychologist specializing in teaching sign language to people w/cognitive disabilities conducted a study in which PET scans were used to determine what parts of the brain were affected by verbal and nonverbal (including sign language) communication.

The surprising conclusion was that the same area of the brain is stimulated. Because of this, (in cognitively impaired children at least) learning to speak is accelerated by simultaneously teaching sign language as the brain receives stimulation from two sources (signing and speaking) rather than stimulation from one source.

Regarding the second question you ask about a deaf person, as opposed to a mute person. Deaf people can speak and therefore a person with TS who was deaf, and had coprolalia would articulate verbally.

The really interesting question is whether a person with TS who is mute and signs, would have the ivoluntary compulsion to curse (or otherwise articulate) come out as sign language.

I suspect that it would not. To illustrate, imagine a person with TS who is compelled to make "beeps" or "cliks." This is far more common then cursing. Some of these sounds are just that - sounds, (like clearing your throat) with no meaning. As such they couldn't be translated into sign language.

The likely outcome of this scenerio then, is that the person with Tourettes will express his symptematology through different means - like more or different tics and/or gestures. Remember though, that this is not under the control of the individual with TS. There is no concsious choice made to curse, or not to curse, or to bite the lip. It's based on problems with the nuerotransmitters described above.

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[CovDiesel]

Tourettes was funny for me until I read this thread... now I am sad.

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