Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation over the Cerebellum Enhances Sadness Recognition in Parkinson’s Disease Patients: a Pilot Study

Emotional processing impairments, resulting in a difficulty to decode emotions from faces especially for negative emotions, are characteristic non-motor features of Parkinson’s disease (PD). There is limited evidence about the specific contribution of the cerebellum to the recognition of emotional contents in facial expressions even though patients with cerebellar dysfunction often lose this ability. In this study, we aimed to evaluate whether the recognition of facial expressions can be modulated by cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in PD patients. Nine PD patients were enrolled and received anodal and sham tDCS (2 mA, 20 min), for 5 consecutive days, in two separate cycles at intervals of at least 1 month. The facial emotion recognition task was administered at baseline (T0) and after cerebellar tDCS on day 5 (T1). Our preliminary study showed that anodal cerebellar tDCS significantly enhanced emotional recognition in response to sad facial expressions by about 16%, but left recognition of anger, happiness, and neutral facial expressions unchanged. Despite the small sample size, our preliminary results show that anodal tDCS applied for five consecutive days over the cerebellum modulates the way PD patients recognize specific facial expressions, thus suggesting that the cerebellum plays a crucial role in recognition of negative emotions and corroborating previous knowledge on the link between social cognition and the cerebellum.