Testing the neural noise account: an investigation of visual temporal precision in Tourette syndrome

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neurological disorder of childhood onset characterised by the occurrence of vocal and motor tics. The pathophysiology of TS has been linked to dysfunction within cortical-striatal-thalamic-cortical (CSTC) brain circuits and alterations in gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) signalling within the striatum. Recently, it has been proposed that increased neural noise, leading to decreased signal-to-noise, may be responsible for dysfunctional information processing in TS. Importantly, increased neural noise could impact all stages of the sensorimotor processing, including sensation, action planning, and action execution, and it currently remains to be determined whether this ‘increased neural noise account’ of TS refers to all aspects of information processing, or is specific to particular stages of information processing. We hypothesised that if TS was associated with decreased signal-to-noise when processing visual stimuli, then this might be reflected in a reduction in the precision of their perceptual timing estimates. To examine this, we investigated the precision of perceptual timing in a group of individuals with tic disorder using a visual temporal-order-judgement (TOJ) task. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement Hannah R. Slack is supported by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) PhD studentship [Grant number: ES/P000711/]. Stephen R. Jackson is supported by grants from the Medical Research Council (MRC) [T032588], Tourettes Association of America, Tourettes Action (UK), and the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre. Georgina M. Jackson is supported by grants from the Medical Research Council (MRC) [T032588] and Tourettes Action (UK). ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: The School of Psychology Ethics Committee of the University of Nottingham gave ethical approval for this work (S1455). I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable. Yes All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors