Background: Social anxiety disorder, also known as social phobia, is a marked and persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations in which the person is exposed to unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny by others. It usually begins in mid-adolescence and has a chronic course and interferes in academic, social, family and personal functioning. Recent studies have shown that social anxiety disorder is more prevalent in adults with migraine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHemifacial spasm is a disorder of the seventh cranial nerve, which is characterized by irregular, involuntary and recurrent tonic and clonic contractions of the ipsilateral facial expression muscles. This disorder affects mainly adults, and there are few cases reported in childhood. The main etiologies are vascular problems, although tumors are an important cause of hemifacial spasm via a direct or an indirect mass effect.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough the latency between the initiation of thyroarytenoid electrical activity and the onset of phonation generally is increased in patients with adductor laryngeal dystonia, there is disagreement about whether there is overlap of latency values in these patients and normal subjects. The goal of this article was to compare the severity of dysphonia with the latency between electrophysiological activation of the thyroarytenoid muscle (TA) and the onset of phonation in patients with adductor laryngeal dystonia and compare the values with normal controls. Twenty-one patients with adductor dystonia and 15 control patients underwent laryngeal electromyographic (EMG) examination of the left TA.
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