Voxel-based lesion symptom mapping analysis of depressive mood in patients with isolated cerebellar stroke: A pilot study

Post-stroke depression (PSD) is the most common neuropsychological sequela of stroke and occurs in approximately one-third of all stroke survivors. However, there are no well-established predictors of PSD. Depression in stroke patients is correlated with unfavorable outcomes. Meta-analyses of the relationship between PSD and lesion location have yielded contradictory results and have not adequately addressed the impact of cerebellar lesions. Furthermore, other brain regions associated with depression in patients with cerebellar stroke remain a matter of debate. For these reasons, this cross-sectional study investigated the relationship between PSD and lesion location in patients with isolated cerebellar stroke. Twenty-four patients in the subacute rehabilitative period following a first-ever isolated cerebellar stroke were enrolled in the study. Depressive mood were evaluated using the Geriatric Depression Scale. Regions of interest were drawn manually on T1-weighted magnetic resonance images using MRIcron software, and data were normalized to a standard brain template in order to examine the neural correlates of depression using voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping analysis. Voxel-wise subtraction and χ (Ayerbe et al., 2014) analyses indicated that damage to the left posterior cerebellar hemisphere was associated with depression. Significant correlations were also found between the severity of depressive symptoms and lesions in lobules VI, VIIb, VIII, Crus I, and Crus II of the left cerebellar hemisphere (Pcorrected = 0.045). Our results suggest that damage to the left posterior cerebellum is associated with increased depressive mood severity in patients with isolated cerebellar stroke.