1 The Departments of Pediatrics and Medicine (Division of Neurology), University of Colorado, and Colorado General Hospital, Denver
A third patient with the "bobble-head doll syndrome" was reported. This is a "tic-like" movement disorder described thus far only in children. Its chief features are a 2 to 3 per second up-and-down or to-and-fro bobbing of the head, sometimes also of the trunk, which could be inhibited voluntarily and disappeared in sleep. Each child had chronic, slowly-progressive hydrocephaly, including marked enlargement of the third ventricle. In the patient presented here this was due to aqueductal stenosis, probably acquired; in the two patients presented previously a large cyst was found in the region of the third ventricle. Because surgical relief of hydrocephaly resulted in disappearance, or at least marked reduction of the head-bobbing, recognition of this "tic" with a neuropathologic basis is of therapeutic importance.
Submitted on January 19, 1967