A chronometric study of the posterior cerebellum's function in emotional processing

Introduction

This database includes the raw data linked with the paper “ A chronometric study of the posterior cerebellum’s function in emotional processing ” under review on Current Biology. In this paper, we reported healthy individuals’ mean accuracy rates and reaction times (RTs) during an emotion discrimination task while receiving chronometric and state-dependent TMS over the posterior cerebellum (Experiment 1, 2 and 3), the early visual cortex (Experiment 1) and the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS, Experiment 2 and 3). The present study aimed at investigating the chronometry of the posterior cerebellar involvement during social processing and its functional connectivity with cortical hub of the social brain.

Methods

In Experiment 1 (N=25), we assessed the temporal involvement of the cerebellum in facial emotion discrimination by applying triple-pulse (20 Hz= TMS over the early visual cortex, the paravermal posterior cerebellum and the vertex at four different time-window: 20-120, 120-220, 220-320, 320-420 ms from stimulus onset. In Experiment 2 (N=24), we delivered double-pulse TMS (40 ms between each pulse, 25 Hz) at 100-140, 130-170, 170-210 ms from stimulus onset, over the paravermal posterior cerebellum, the right pSTS and the vertex. In Experiment 3 (N=36), we used a dual-site condition-and-perturb TMS approach to test cerebellar-pSTS connectivity by conditioning the paravermal posterior cerebellum (and the vertex as control condition in a separate session) through 15 minutes of inhibitory (1 Hz) TMS and then perturbing the pSTS during the execution of the facial emotion discrimination task through five-pulses (10 Hz).

Results (in brief)

We showed that the posterior cerebellum is recruited at early stages of the emotional processing (starting 100 ms after stimulus onset), simultaneously with the pSTS. A key node of the emotional-social brain. Moreover, we found that the recruitment of the pSTS in emotional processing is dependent on cerebellar activation. Our results are the first to shed light on chronometric aspects of cerebellar function and its causal connectivity with other nodes of the social brain.