Data from: Functional role of the cerebellum in Parkinson’s disease: a PET study

Objectives: To test for cerebellar involvement in motor and nonmotor
impairments in Parkinson’s disease (PD), and to determine patterns of
metabolic correlations with supratentorial brain structures, we correlated
clinical motor, cognitive and psychiatric scales with cerebellar
metabolism. Methods: We included 90 patients with PD. Motor, cognitive and
psychiatric domains were assessed, and resting-state 18FDG-PET metabolic
imaging was performed. The motor, cognitive and psychiatric scores were
entered separately in a principal component analysis. We looked for
correlations between these three principal components and cerebellar
metabolism. Furthermore, we extracted the mean glucose metabolism value
for each significant cerebellar cluster and looked for patterns of
cerebrum‑cerebellum metabolic correlations. Results: Severity of
impairment was correlated with increased metabolism in the anterior lobes
and vermis (motor domain), and the right Crus I, Crus II, and declive
(cognitive domain), and the right Crus I and Crus II (psychiatric domain).
There were no results surviving multiple testing corrections regarding the
psychiatric domain. Moreover, we found distributed and overlapping ‑ but
not identical‑ patterns of metabolic correlations for motor and cognitive
domains. Specific supratentorial structures (cortical structures, basal
ganglia, and thalamus) were strongly correlated with each of the
cerebellar clusters. Conclusions: These results confirm the role of the
cerebellum in nonmotor domains of Parkinson’s disease, with differential
but overlapping patterns of metabolic correlations suggesting the
involvement of cerebello‑thalamo-striatal‑cortical loops.