On this week's Journal Club session, Eleonora Bernasconi will talk about her work in the presentation entitled "Computational study of the effects of transcranial stimulation on the cerebellum".
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a promising technique that could provide treatment for patients with cerebellar disorders. However, the underlying mechanisms of the action of TMS on the cerebellum are still unknown. Our goal is to study the effects of TMS on the cerebellum. We developed a model of the cerebellum. We stimulated all compartments of all neurons with a square wave, whose amplitude is solely dependent on the distance between the neuron compartment and the source of the stimulus. The stimulus was applied as a voltage using the extracellular mechanism in NEURON. We modelled the stimulus with frequencies of 1, 5, 10, 20 and 50 Hz. The higher the stimulus frequency, the bigger the amplitude of the modulation. For stimulus frequencies above 50 Hz, the Purkinje cell’s instantaneous firing rate no longer oscillates in accordance with the stimulus. We show that stimulus frequency can significantly impact the cell’s behaviour, highlighting the importance of carefully selecting this parameter in clinical settings. Future work will employ a more realistic simulation model.
Papers:
- S. Sudhakar, S. Hong, I. Raikov, R. Publio, C. Lang, T. Close, D. Guo, M. Negrello, E. Schutter, "Spatiotemporal network coding of physiological mossy fiber inputs by the cerebellar granular layer", 2017, PLOS Computational Biology, 13, e1005754
- Y. Zang, S. Dieudonné, E. De, Schutter, "Voltage- and Branch-Specific Climbing Fiber Responses in Purkinje Cells", 2018, Cell Reports, 24, 1536--1549
- S. Diwakar, J. Magistretti, M. Goldfarb, G. Naldi, E. D'Angelo, "Axonal Na+ channels ensure fast spike activation and back-propagation in cerebellar granule cells", 2009, Journal of Neurophysiology, 101, 519--532
Date: 2025/06/13
Time: 14:00
Location: SP3011 & online