Brain connectivity underlying pathological patterns in essential tremor

Essential tremor (ET) represents the most common neurologic disorder that causes postural or action tremor, with an estimated prevalence worldwide of up to 5% of the population. The pathophysiology and mechanisms of ET as well as the possible structural or functional changes have been only partially investigated, although promising post-mortem and animal studies point to the involvement of the so-called tremor network, comprising the cerebello-thalamo-cortical loop. To complete the picture, also the neuropsychological and psychopathological profiles of ET are still largely unclear, albeit there are some evidences about heterogeneous cognitive and mood dysfunctions. The main critical point is that the available studies on ET have been conducted on heterogeneous samples of patients and applying basic analysis techniques for evaluating specific structures. Therefore, more stringent inclusion criteria and advanced analysis techniques for depicting different aspects of this pathology are nowadays necessary. In this study, on a highly selected group of homogenous ET patients we aimed at: 1) localising brain activations in various motor tasks; 2) characterising resting-state functional connectivity (FC); and 3) assessing perfusion changes, all these by relying on MRI-based advanced techniques.