Objective: To evaluate the position of cerebellum in the pathophysiology of cervical dystonia by assessing the differences of cerebellar connectivity when comparing normal subjects and cervical dystonia patients.

Background: As of late, dystonia in general has been proposed to be a network disorder rather than a disease based on a pathology of a single structure. Recent findings have indicated also other regions than the usually stated basal ganglia, envisaging dystonia as a disorder affecting basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical and cerebello-thalamo-cortical pathways.

Methods: 25 healthy subjects and 25 cervical dystonia patients have undergone functional magnetic resonance imaging with a task requiring the interception of a moving target, which had been proved to be associated with cerebellum. In a psychophysiologic interaction model the left cerebellar crus I, corresponding to the area of decreased activity during the task in cervical dystonia patients, was used as the seed region for the connectivity analysis.

Results: We have found a significantly lower success rate in the cervical dystonia patients and the connectivity analysis revealed decreased connectivity of the stated seed to the left cerebellar lobule VIIb and VIII and the left middle temporal gyrus in the cervical dystonia patients .

Conclusions: These results point to a disruption of the communication of specific cerebellar nodes with other both supra- and infratentorial regions, well in accord with the definition of dystonia as a network disorder.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/disruption-of-cerebellar-connectivity-in-cervical-dystonia/