Trial and Tremor

Extreme cold or overwhelming fear might make you shiver or tremble. But if those temporary shakes lasted for any significant time, they’d become a debilitating problem. Tremor, the uncontrolled shaking of part of the body, is the most common movement disorder, but treatments are limited by our incomplete understanding of the brain mechanisms behind it. A new study has revealed that Purkinje cells (blue in the mouse cerebellum pictured) are involved. Purkinje cells send regular signals to other areas of the brain, and when these were blocked, tremors in mice stopped. Closer inspection showed that tremors start when the regular signals are modified to send in sporadic bursts. The researchers were able to reduce tremor by targeting the cerebellum with deep brain stimulation – a treatment sometimes used on other areas of the brain – and trigger tremors by altering these cells’ behaviour. This deeper understanding may help get tremor under control.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

Website

• Image from work by Amanda M Brown and colleagues
• Department of Pathology and Immunology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, March 2020