Dystonia articles from across Nature Portfolio

In this Perspective, Zech and Winkelmann outline multidimensional strategies for genetic diagnosis in patients with rare movement disorders and highlight community-driven data-sharing and case-matchmaking platforms designed to foster the discovery of new genotype–phenotype relationships.

General Movements Assessment (GMA) is useful in early prediction of cerebral palsy but necessitates trained professionals. Here, the authors show a quantitative deep learning-based method to automate GMA with strong performance, adhering to GMA principles and exhibiting robust interpretability.

Clinical boundaries between neurology and psychiatry hamper understanding of disorders with phenotypes that span these disciplines. In this Review, Peall et al. discuss rare genetic brain disorders with neurological and psychiatric phenotypes, and consider common underlying mechanisms that could be therapeutic targets.

The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) has updated its guidelines on the use of botulinum neurotoxins in neurological disorders. The new guidelines provide individual recommendations for the four products that are commercially available in the USA; however, the clinical differences between the products are still not clear.

Genetic revelations in 2014 are testing traditional classification systems for movement disorders, and our approach to clinical diagnostics. Mutations in dystonia-associated genes lead to a spectrum of disorders with different phenotypes, underscoring the need for stringent clinical phenotyping of patients with movement disorders, as well as next-generation sequencing approaches.

The emotions teeming inside the works of the Romantic composers may have neurological explanations, as a recent meeting explored. Philip Ball tuned in.