Role of the cerebellum in reaction to perturbations during gait in humans.

Patients with lesions in the intermediate and lateral cerebellum have primarily difficulties in precise placement of the feet during gait while patients with vermal lesions suffer more from deficits in dynamic balance control. Till now one has studied mostly unperturbed gait however. The next step is to gain insight in the role of the cerebellum in perturbed gait. The working hypothesis is that the intermediate and lateral cerebellum are essential structures with respect to adjustments of reactions during gait. The importance of these structures increases as adjustments are under time pressure and unpredictable. This will be texted in 2 ways in order to obtain both indirect and direct evidence for the contribution of these structures to gait adjustments. First, both patients and controls will be examined during the performance of reactions to gait perturbations (with the expectation that these reactions will be less efficient in the presence of lesions in the intermediate and lateral cerebellum). Primarily patients that has a part of the cerebellum removed because of a tumor will be included. Second, the same subjects will also be examined in fMRI during simulated perturbations of gait (through video-recordings of the previously experienced perturbations).

Keywords:Cerebellum, Gait, Movement control, Split-belt treadmill, Structural MRI, VLSM, DTI

Disciplines:Orthopaedics, Neurosciences, Biological and physiological psychology, Cognitive science and intelligent systems, Developmental psychology and ageing