Objective: We aimed to reveal cerebellar dysfunction in patients with essential tremor using neurophysiological methods.

Background:

Cerebellar dysfunction is suggested to contribute to tremor generation. However, in essential tremor (ET), cerebellar functions have not been fully studied with physiological methods.

Methods:

Participants were 20 patients with ET and 30 age-matched healthy volunteers.  We used two methods to study cerebellar function. One was Cerebellar inhibition (CBI): the motor cortical inhibition evoked by cerebellar stimulation. The other was prism adaptation: motor performance adaptation to visual angle perturbation induced by prism glasses. The results were compared across the groups.   

Results:

CBI was reduced and prism adaptation were affected in patients with essential tremor.

Conclusions: Our results suggested that cerebellum should be involved in ET even though the patients had no clinical ataxic symptoms.  The cerebellar dysfunction shown here may reflect a primary pathogenic abnormality or secondary compensatory physiological phenomenon to an original pathogenic lesion elsewhere

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/prism-adaptation-and-cerebellar-inhibition-were-impaired-in-essential-tremor/