View clinical trials related to Cerebellum.
Filter by:Motor adaptation and generalization are believed to occur via the integration of various forms of sensory feedback for a congruent representation of the body's position in space along with estimation of inertial properties of the limb segments for accurate specification of movement. Thus, motor adaptation is often studied within curated environments incorporating a "mis-match" between different sensory systems (i.e. a visual field shift via prism googles or a visuomotor rotation via virtual reality environment) and observing how motor plans change based on this mis-match. However, these adaptations are environment-specific and show little generalization outside of their restricted experimental setup. There remains a need for motor adaptation research that demonstrates motor learning that generalizes to other environments and movement types. This work could then inform physical and occupational therapy neurorehabilitation interventions targeted at addressing motor deficits.
In our previous cross-over study--the continuous θ burst stimulation (cTBS) targeting cerebellum dentate nucleus of 44 drug-refractory epilepsy (DRE) patients, a significant reduction in seizure frequency was observed. However, the mechanism of this target to reduce seizures is still unknown. This study aims to explore the mechanism of cTBS targeting cerebellum dentate nucleus for DRE, in order to provide theoretical support for this treatment method. A total of 50 patients with DRE will have 2-week cTBS treatment via accurate navigation to bilateral cerebellar dentate nucleus. Participants will be took TMS-EEG, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) pre- and post- treatment. These three examinations will help to analyze the brain functional connectivity and suggest the mechanism of action of this treatment.
The cerebellum is involved in regulating balance and walking and plays a crucial role in the locomotor adaptation and learning processes. This study aims to investigate the association between balance and the integrity of the cerebellar white matter tracts in a healthy population. Healthy participants will undergo four weeks of balance training. The investigators will analyze changes in the microstructural integrity of the cerebellar white matter tract before and after four weeks of balance training.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder and affects approximately 1 million people in the United States with total annual costs approaching 11 billion dollars. The most common symptoms of PD are tremor, stiffness, slowness, and trouble with balance/walking, which lead to severe impairments in performing activities of daily living. Current medical and surgical treatments for PD are either only mildly effective, expensive, or associated with a variety of side-effects. Therefore, the development of practical and effective add-ons to current therapeutic treatment approaches would have many benefits. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique that can affect brain activity and can help make long-term brain changes to improve functions like walking and balance. While a few initial research studies and review articles involving tDCS have concluded that tDCS may improve PD walking and balance, many results are not meaningful in real life and several crucial issues still prevent tDCS from being a useful add-on intervention in PD. These include the selection of stimulation sites (brain regions stimulated) and tDCS electrode placement. Most studies have targeted the motor cortex (brain region that controls intentional movement), but there is evidence that the cerebellum - which helps control gait and balance, is connected to several other brain areas, and is easily stimulated with tDCS - may be a likely location to further optimize walking and balance in PD. There is also evidence that certain electrodes placements may be better than others. Thus, the purpose of this study is to determine the effects of cerebellar tDCS stimulation using two different placement strategies on walking and balance in PD. Additionally, although many tDCS devices are capable of a range of stimulation intensities (for example, 0 mA - 5 mA), the intensities currently used in most tDCS research are less than 2 mA, which is sufficient to produce measurable improvements; but, these improvements may be expanded at higher intensities. In the beginning, when the safety of tDCS was still being established for human subjects, careful and moderate stimulation approaches were warranted. However, recent work using stimulation at higher intensities (for example, up to 4 mA) have been performed in different people and were found to have no additional negative side-effects. Now that the safety of tDCS at higher intensities is better established, studies exploring the differences in performance between moderate (i.e., 2 mA) and higher (i.e., 4 mA) intensities are necessary to determine if increasing the intensity increases the effectiveness of the desired outcome. Prospective participants will include 10 people with mild-moderate PD that will be recruited to complete five randomly-ordered stimulation sessions, separated by at least 5 days each. Each session will involve one visit to the Integrative Neurophysiology Laboratory (INPL) and will last for approximately one hour. Data collection is expected to take 4-6 months. Each session will include walking and balance testing performed while wearing the tDCS device. Total tDCS stimulation time for each session will be 25 minutes.