Turner's syndrome is the name given to the suite of symptoms present when a child is born with only one sex chromosome. "Normal" humans have 46 chromosomes, of which 44 are matched pairs of "autosomes" and 2 are sex chromosomes. Sex chromosomes come in X and Y forms. If you have two X chromosomes, you are a normal female. If you have an X and a Y, you are a normal male. If you have an X and nothing else, you are a female, by default (no Y = female), but you only have one X instead of two, and you are said to have "Turner's Syndrome." Fetuses with a Y and nothing else don't survive to be born, so there is no male equivalent of Turner's syndrome, and you can't have Turner's syndrome if you are a male. Tourette's Syndrome is the name given to a variety of symptoms such as eye or facial tics, involuntary head or shoulder movements, uncontrollable weird noises, including the shouting out of obscentities in inappropriate places/times. Tourette's can range from mild to severe, and the level of symptoms can come and go. I've never heard of tongue-touching or failure to swallow saliva as part of Tourette's, but in many ways these types of actions are in the same general category as Tourette's. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is the name given to behaviors that a person does repeatedly and seemingly without being able to control them. Again, these can include actions and sounds/noises. Like Tourette's, the range of symptoms can be from mild and sporadic to severe and all-encompassing. My child with Down Syndrome has some behaviors similar to Tourette's (weird sounds, flapping a stick all the time in his hands), and some which are clearly obsessive-compulsive (doors MUST be closed a certain way, certain things must be done in a certain order every time). They tend to come and go. My sister is obsessive-compulsive about the towels in her linen closet and the cups and mugs in the kitchen cupboards, but nothing else. Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition Texas A&M University