Twitching Toward Understanding

Published: October 07, 2004 | Author: Renee Ballenger | Read Time: 1 minutes

A candidate for a new surgery to treat Tourette’s Syndrome, and a sophomore at Southern Utah University, Peter Jensen will discuss his research and attempt to disband negative depictions of the condition during the October 14th Convocations lecture, “Twitching Toward Understanding: Tourette’s, the Misunderstood Syndrome.”

As an 11-year-old child, doctors told Peter his was the most severe case known at the time in the Salt Lake City area. Tourette’s Syndrome is a severe neurological disorder characterized by multiple facial and other body tics, often accompanied by grunts and compulsive utterances, interjections and obscenities.

Peter manifests all of the most common forms of tics known in Tourette’s Syndrome and some of the rarer ones as well, like Coprolalia, motor and various vocal tics.

An engineering major, Peter researches the syndrome, including its causes and effects, medications and other therapies. He currently is a candidate for a new experimental surgery to relieve the Syndrome’s symptoms. His goal is to educate people about Tourette’s Syndrome and help the general public move beyond Hollywood’s depiction of the condition.

Unless otherwise noted, Convocations take place on Thursdays at 11:30 a.m. in the Auditorium. They are free and open to the public. Anyone interested in taking Convocations for college credit should call 586-8082. And for information on more upcoming Convocations, see www.suu.edu/ad/pr/convo.

Related Links

http://www.suu.edu/ad/pr/convo/

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