Patients with focal cerebellar lesions show reduced auditory cortex activation during silent reading

No Evidence for Semantic Prediction Deficits in Individuals With Cerebellar Degeneration

Cerebellar involvement in language processing has received considerable attention in the neuroimaging and neuropsychology literatures. Building off the motor control literature, one account of this involvement centers on the idea of internal models. In the context of language, this hypothesis suggests that the cerebellum is essential for building semantic models that, in concert with the cerebral cortex, help anticipate or predict linguistic input. To date, supportive evidence has primarily come from neuroimaging studies showing that cerebellar activation increases in contexts in which semantic predictions are generated and violated. Taking a neuropsychological approach, we put the internal model hypothesis to the test, asking if individuals with cerebellar degeneration (n = 14) show reduced sensitivity to semantic prediction. Using a sentence verification task, we compare reaction time to sentences that vary in terms of cloze probability. We also evaluated a more constrained variant of the prediction hypothesis, asking if the cerebellum facilitates the generation of semantic predictions when the content of a sentence refers to a dynamic rather than static mental transformation. The results failed to support either hypothesis: Compared to matched control participants (n = 17), individuals with cerebellar degeneration showed a similar reduction in reaction time for sentences with high cloze probability and no selective impairment in predictions involving dynamic transformations. These results challenge current theorizing about the role of the cerebellum in language processing, pointing to a misalignment between neuroimaging and neuropsychology research on this topic.

The longitudinal neural dynamics changes of whole brain connectome during natural recovery from poststroke aphasia

Poststroke aphasia is one of the most dramatic functional deficits that results from direct damage of focal brain regions and dysfunction of large-scale brain networks. The reconstruction of language function depends on the hierarchical whole-brain dynamic reorganization. However, investigations into the longitudinal neural changes of large-scale brain networks for poststroke aphasia remain scarce. Here we characterize large-scale brain dynamics in left-frontal-stroke aphasia through energy landscape analysis. Using fMRI during an auditory comprehension task, we find that aphasia patients suffer serious whole-brain dynamics perturbation in the acute and subacute stages after stroke, in which the brains were restricted into two major activity patterns. Following spontaneous recovery process, the brain flexibility improved in the chronic stage. Critically, we demonstrated that the abnormal neural dynamics are correlated with the aberrant brain network coordination. Taken together, the energy landscape analysis exhibited that the acute poststroke aphasia has a constrained, low dimensional brain dynamics, which were replaced by less constrained and high dimensional dynamics at chronic aphasia. Our study provides a new perspective to profoundly understand the pathological mechanisms of poststroke aphasia.

The role of cerebellum in the child neuropsychological functioning

This chapter proposes a review of neuropsychologic and behavior findings in pediatric pathologies of the cerebellum, including cerebellar malformations, pediatric ataxias, cerebellar tumors, and other acquired cerebellar injuries during childhood. The chapter also contains reviews of the cerebellar mutism/posterior fossa syndrome, reported cognitive associations with the development of the cerebellum in typically developing children and subjects born preterm, and the role of the cerebellum in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorders and developmental dyslexia. Cognitive findings in pediatric cerebellar disorders are considered in the context of known cerebellocerebral connections, internal cellular organization of the cerebellum, the idea of a universal cerebellar transform and computational internal models, and the role of the cerebellum in specific cognitive and motor functions, such as working memory, language, timing, or control of eye movements. The chapter closes with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the cognitive affective syndrome as it has been described in children and some conclusions and perspectives.

The cerebellum and language: Persistent themes and findings

This special issue brings together a set of articles that focus on the cerebellum and language. Contributors were specifically invited from relative newcomers to this research topic, as a way to draw attention to perspectives and findings that might otherwise be overlooked. This editorial provides an overview of the issue from a historical context that draws upon more than 25 years of research on the linguistic cerebellum.