Cerebellum, imaging and translational research
The cerebellum in early psychosis ** and transdiagnostically may have a role through its contribution to cognitive flexibility for efficient goal pursuit (here and here)
The cerebellum is implicated in social and cognitive processes in a large pediatric and transdiagnostic sample (here).
The cerebellum is dynamically related to the the ventral tegmental area in schizophrenia and this pathway is relevant for motivation deficits observed in schizophrenia ** (here)
In this work, we study the role of the cerebellum in modulating the activity of the ventral tegmental area in a prospective longitudinal cohort and propose a reproducible neuroimaging marker indicative of abnormal activity within the cerebellar-VTA circuitry that corresponds to apathy in schizophrenia, in two distinct recordings (baseline, and 3 months later). Further, we have validated this finding in an independently acquired cohort of patients with schizophrenia. These findings offer promising insights into negative symptom pathophysiology and highlight potential targets for therapeutic intervention – we are currently testing this possibility in a triple blind randomized clinical trial (NCT06341517).
Brain stimulation
Cerebellar stimulation modifies large-scale circuitry connectivity and the associated behavior (in this case, attention behavior - in preparation).
Bègue, I., et al. Attentional circuitry targeted cerebellar transcranial magnetic stimulation causes changes in attention.
The first study to integrate a meta-analysis of 98 randomized, sham-controlled trials involving 4'283 patients with E-field modeling to identify TMS targets across and within all symptom domains in schizophrenia.
Sinanaj et al. Mapping Symptom-General and Symptom-Specific Targets for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in Schizophrenia: An Electrical Modeling Meta-Analysis (accepted in Molecular Psychiatry)
Neuroimaging & negative symptoms
We synthesize current research on the negative symptoms of schizophrenia through several levels of analysis: behavioral, psychological, pharmacological, cognitive and computational mechanisms (here)