Comparison of Cerebellar Volume Between Subjects with Bilateral Congenital Blindness and Healthy Individuals

Abstract

Cerebellum regulates motor control and physical coordination. It is known that when eye and hand need to be worked in combination, cerebellum is active and it provides coordination between eye and hand. Cerebellar cortex atrophy appears with dismetry and saccadic eye movement. If there is no stimulant related to vision, how cerebellum is adopted under this circumstance? In order to explore this, 27 male and 16 female volunteers with bilateral congenital blindness were compared with 35 male and 33 female healthy volunteers in this study. MR images of cross-sectional sequential cerebellum of volunteers with 1.5 mm thickness were realized in coronal plane. The surface area of apparent cerebellum seen in cross-sections was calculated by using Onis (Ver. 2.1) programme. Surface area data obtained by systematic randomized sampling were converted to volume by Cavalieri method. Cerebellar volume of bilateral congenital blind male was 128.15 +/- 11.11 cm(3), and cerebellar volume of bilateral congenital blind female was 118.60 +/- 10.73 cm(3). Cerebellar volume for healthy men and women were 132.89 +/- 12.51 cm(3) and 125.97 +/- 10.78 cm(3), respectively. It was revealed that cerebellar volume for bilateral congenital blind men was smaller than that of healthy men, but this difference was not significant. On the other hand cerebellar volume of bilateral congenital blind women was significantly smaller than that of healthy women (p<0.05). No asymmetry was detected between right and left side of cerebellum in both bilateral congenital blind and healthy subjects.