Modulation of cerebellar excitability by polarity-specific noninvasive direct current stimulation
Open accessAbstract
The cerebellum is a crucial structure involved in movement control and cognitive processing. Noninvasive stimulation of the cerebellum results in neurophysiological and behavioral changes, an effect that has been attributed to modulation of cerebello-brain connectivity. At rest, the cerebellum exerts an overall inhibitory tone over the primary motor cortex (M1), cerebello-brain inhibition (CBI), likely through dentate-thalamo-cortical connections. The level of excitability of this pathway before and after stimulation of the cerebellum, however, has not been directly investigated. In this study, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation to determine changes in M1, brainstem, and CBI before and after 25 min of anodal, cathodal, or sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) applied over the right cerebellar cortex. We hypothesized that anodal tDCS would result in an enhancement of CBI and cathodal would decrease it, relative to sham stimulation. We found that cathodal tDCS resulted in a clear decrease of CBI, whereas anodal tDCS increased it, in the absence of changes after sham stimulation. These effects were specific to the cerebello-cortical connections with no changes in other M1 or brainstem excitability measures. The cathodal effect on CBI was found to be dependent on stimulation intensity and lasted up to 30 min after the cessation of tDCS. These results suggest that tDCS can modulate in a focal and polarity-specific manner cerebellar excitability, likely through changes in Purkinje cell activity. Therefore, direct current stimulation of the cerebellum may have significant potential implications for patients with cerebellar dysfunction as well as to motor control studies.
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TMS coils with deeper magnetic field penetration may more effectively engage cerebellar targets.
“TMS coils with deeper magnetic field penetration may more effectively engage cerebellar targets (Galea et al., 2009; Hardwick et al., 2014)”
From A double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled clinical trial of cerebellar intermittent theta burst stimulation for bipolar disorder: Safety, tolerability, mood and cognitive effects (2025) · cites this paper as Galea et al., 2009
The Experimental procedures (TMS of the cerebellum and brainstem; page not provided) describe using a double-cone coil over the cerebellum, and the Cerebellar excitability section describes using TMS there to assess cerebello-brain inhibition. The paper does not say that this coil penetrates more deeply or that deeper penetration improves engagement of cerebellar targets. (LLM, conf=0.78)
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References 38 · Cited by 472
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- Authors
- Galea, J. M., Jayaram, G., Ajagbe, L., & Celnik, P.
- Affiliations
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2009-07-15
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 28
- Pages
- 9115-9122
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC2760225
- OpenAlex
- W2041989893
- Cited by
- 472
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 36 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 42 · 2020: 36 · 2019: 39 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 40 · 2016: 35 · 2015: 27 · 2014: 29 · 2013: 26 · 2012: 15
- FWCI
- 7.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- University of Birmingham Research Portal (University of Birmingham) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD053793, R21HD060169)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Neurology › Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Neurology › Neurological disorders and treatments
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology Research
- Keywords
- transcranial direct current stimulation, primary motor cortex, Purkinje cells, anodal stimulation, cathodal stimulation, brainstem excitability, cerebellar dysfunction, motor control
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Analysis of Variance, Attention, Biophysics, Blinking, Brain Mapping, Brain Stem, Cerebellum, Electric Stimulation, Electrodes, Electromyography, Fatigue, Female, Humans, Functional Laterality, Male, Middle Aged, Motor Cortex, Neuropsychological Tests, Pain, Muscle, Skeletal, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Biophysical Phenomena, Young Adult
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