Dennis Schutter, Dorien Enter and Sylco Hoppenbrouwers, three Danish psychologists recently conducted a study (published in the Journal of Psychiatry Neuroscience) in which they tested the supposed mood-improving abilities of rTMS in the cerebellum and its effects on the processing of different facial expressions. Other recent studies have shown that as little as a single session of high frequency rTMS in the cerebellum can elicit positive emotional responses, as well as increase the reactivity of subjects to implicit positive stimuli. This increased sensitivity to the subconscious presentation of positive expressions usually occurred before a change in mood had been perceived or experienced by the subjects, indicating that the effects of rTMS in the cerebellum may be at lower levels of information processing rather than the conscious experience of mood. Schutter et al found consistent results with this idea, in that cerebellar rTMS was shown to increase implicit processing of happy facial expressions but not create any change in experienced mood. The researchers discussed possible reasons behind this latter finding, and introduced the possibility that their methods for mood detection were unfit to measure barely conscious changes in mood.
I find these results particularly interesting in light of our recent class discussion regarding the amygdala's role in vigilance detection in the presence of danger. In much the same way that the amygdala creates a subconscious reaction to danger before our conscious mind can even process what the source of danger is, the cerebellum seems to react to high-frequency rTMS by increasing subconscious processing of happy faces without communicating a change in mood to our conscious mind. While it is disputed whether a change in mood is actually present in these scenarios, the results are nonetheless interesting for their possible implications regarding the treatment of depression using rTMS.
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