Cerebellar Electrical Activity as a Marker for Predicting Brain Health and Disease: A Review

The cerebellum is traditionally considered a structure responsible for motor control, but it is also involved in auditory perception, vocalization, speech, memory, emotional control, and social cognition. Due to its high intrinsic synaptic plasticity and complex connectivity with other brain regions, it is of potential interest for monitoring adaptive responses under various physiological and pathological conditions to capture global brain dynamics. Nevertheless, the use of electrocerebellography (ECeG) to detect changes in cerebellar electrical activity is limited, and a systematic evaluation of ECeG data to inform future research directions is lacking. This review summarizes recent ECeG research to explore the contribution of this time-honored method to deciphering the cerebellum’s spatial and temporal dynamics in health and disease. ECeG studies from the past three decades examining the slow and fast adaptive responses of the cerebellum in different cerebellar layers during sleep, anesthesia, brain injury, epilepsy, neurodegenerative diseases, and neuropsychiatric disorders are compiled from the PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases and discussed accordingly. It can be concluded that, despite certain limitations, ECeG is a practical, valuable, and reliable technique for detecting and predicting the complex spatial and temporal features of cerebellar electrical activity.