Citation

Strzalkowski NDJ, Chau AD, Gan LS, Kiss ZHT. Cerebellum 2019; 18(2): 157-165.

Affiliation

Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, T2N4N1, Canada. zkiss@ucalgary.ca.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s12311-018-0971-0

PMID

30117122

Abstract

The cerebellum is implicated in the pathophysiology of numerous movement disorders, which makes it an attractive target for noninvasive neurostimulation. Continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) can induce long lasting plastic changes in human brain; however, the efficacy of different simulation protocols has not been investigated at the cerebellum. Here, we compare a traditional 50-Hz and a modified 30-Hz cTBS protocols at modulating cerebellar activity in healthy subjects. Seventeen healthy adults participated in two testing sessions where they received either 50-Hz (cTBS₅₀) or 30-Hz (cTBS₃₀) cerebellar cTBS. Cerebellar brain inhibition (CBI), a measure of cerebello-thalamocortical pathway strength, and motor evoked potentials (MEP) were measured in the dominant first dorsal interosseous muscle before and after (up to ~ 40 min) cerebellar cTBS. Both cTBS protocols induced cerebellar depression, indicated by significant reductions in CBI (P < 0.001). No differences were found between protocols (cTBS₅₀ and cTBS₃₀) at any time point (P = 0.983). MEP amplitudes were not significantly different following either cTBS protocol (P = 0.130). The findings show cerebellar excitability to be equally depressed by 50-Hz and 30-Hz cTBS in heathy adults and support future work to explore the efficacy of different cerebellar cTBS protocols in movement disorder patients where cerebellar depression could provide therapeutic benefits.

Language: en

Keywords

Cerebellum; TMS; Theta burst stimulation; Transcranial magnetic stimulation; cTBS