The cerebellum in Parkinson’s disease

By Tao Wu, Mark Hallett. Brain : a journal of neurology, 2013

728 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Parkinson’s disease is a chronic progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by resting tremor, slowness of movements, rigidity, gait disturbance and postural instability. Most investigations on Parkinson’s disease focused on the basal ganglia, whereas the cerebellum has often been overlooked. However, increasing evidence suggests that the cerebellum may have certain roles in the pathophysiology of Parkinson’s disease. Anatomical studies identified reciprocal connections between the basal ganglia and cerebellum. There are Parkinson’s disease–related pathological changes in the cerebellum. Functional or morphological modulations in the cerebellum were detected related to akinesia/rigidity, tremor, gait disturbance, dyskinesia and some non-motor symptoms. It is likely that the major roles of the cerebellum in Parkinson’s disease include pathological and compensatory effects. Pathological changes in the cerebellum might be induced by dopaminergic degeneration, abnormal drives from the basal ganglia and dopaminergic treatment, and may account for some clinical symptoms in Parkinson’s disease. The compensatory effect may help maintain better motor and non-motor functions. The cerebellum is also a potential target for some parkinsonian symptoms. Our knowledge about the roles of the cerebellum in Parkinson’s disease remains limited, and further attention to the cerebellum is warranted.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Neurology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1f0582cb0230672c039d03e1008f2cf2f03a1523

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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

In Neurology

Citations in the corpus

Evidence-based guidelines on the therapeutic use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). (2017, result): “These results have been obtained in healthy humans and could have clinical interest, especially in patients with disorders involving cerebellar dysfunction such as ataxia, Parkinson’s disease, autism and schizophrenia (Yeganeh-Doost et al., 2011; Massaquoi, 2012; Wu and Hallett, 2013).”
Consensus Paper: Towards a Systems-Level View of Cerebellar Function: the Interplay Between Cerebellum, Basal Ganglia, and Cortex (2016, background): “, Parkinson’s disease, dystonia, Tourette syndrome and addiction), as well as in normal basal ganglia functions, such as reward-related learning [3, 37].”