OBJECTIVE: We tested the neurorestorative effects of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) on the use of contextual expectations to interpret actions occurring in ambiguous sensory sceneries in a sample of adolescents and young adults with congenital, non-progressive cerebellar malformation (CM).
METHODS: We administered an action prediction task in which, in an implicit-learning phase, the probability of co-occurrence between actions and contextual elements was manipulated to form either strongly or moderately informative expectations. Subsequently, in a testing phase, we probed the use of these contextual expectations for predicting ambiguous (i.e., temporally occluded) actions. In a sham-controlled, within-subject design, participants received anodic or sham ctDCS during the task.
RESULTS: Anodic ctDCS, compared to sham, improved patients\' ability to use contextual expectations to predict the unfolding of actions embedded in moderately, but not strongly, informative contexts.
CONCLUSIONS: These findings corroborate the role of the cerebellum in using previously learned contextual associations to predict social events and document the efficacy of ctDCS to boost social prediction in patients with congenital cerebellar malformation. The study encourages the further exploration of ctDCS as a neurorestorative tool for the neurorehabilitation of social cognition abilities in neurological, neuropsychiatric, and neurodevelopmental disorders featured by macro- or micro-structural alterations of the cerebellum.
目的:我们测试了小脑经颅直流电刺激(ctDCS)对使用上下文期望来解释在青少年和先天性年轻人样本中模糊的感觉场景中发生的动作的神经修复作用,非进行性小脑畸形(CM)。
方法:我们执行了一项行动预测任务,在内隐学习阶段,操纵动作和上下文元素之间同时发生的概率,以形成强烈或中等信息的期望。随后,在测试阶段,我们探讨了使用这些上下文期望来预测模棱两可(即,暂时闭塞)动作。在一个假控制中,学科内设计,参与者在任务期间接受了阳极或假ctDCS。
结果:阳极ctDCS,与假相比,提高了患者使用情境期望来预测嵌入适度的动作展开的能力,但不强烈,信息上下文。
结论:这些发现证实了小脑在使用先前学习的背景关联来预测社会事件中的作用,并记录了ctDCS在先天性小脑畸形患者中提高社会预测的功效。该研究鼓励进一步探索ctDCS作为神经修复工具,用于神经社会认知能力的神经康复,神经精神病学,和以小脑宏观或微观结构改变为特征的神经发育障碍。