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The authors review the relationship of repetitive behaviors to frontal lobe degenerations and report the repetitive and compulsive behaviors, radiologic imaging findings, and neuropathology of 3 patients with dementia secondary to frontal lobe degeneration. These 3 patients and 78% of 46 proven pathologic cases of frontal lobe degeneration described in the literature demonstrate repetitive behaviors ranging from motor stereotypies to complex obsessive-compulsive disorder. This review suggests that combined damage to the frontal lobe, caudate nucleus, and globus pallidus may account for the repetitive behaviors seen in frontal lobe degenerations, idiopathic obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other neuropsychiatric diseases.

Fifty patients with mild-to-moderate tardive dyskinesia (TD), who were devoid of other clinically apparent movement abnormalities, and 70 neurologically normal controls were assessed with a battery of instruments developed to measure and analyze the hyperkinetic movements of TD directly, objectively, and noninvasively. The electro-mechanical features that most consistently characterized and differentiated the TD group were a greater variability of all movements, increased energy in the 1-2 Hz frequency band in hand and foot movements, and a marked increase in movements during distracting tasks. This instrumentation promises to be useful in quantitating abnormal involuntary movements, in prospectively following individual patients to scan for small deviations from an instrument-established baseline, and in examining patients with combined movement abnormalities.