An fMRI Study of Intra-Individual Functional Topography in the Human Cerebellum

Catherine J Stoodley,Jeremy D Schmahmann,Eve M Valera

doi:10.1155/2010/840942

Abstract

Neuroimaging studies report cerebellar activation during both motor and non-motor paradigms, and suggest a functional topography within the cerebellum. Sensorimotor tasks activate the anterior lobe, parts of lobule VI, and lobule VIII, whereas higher-level tasks activate lobules VI and VII in the posterior lobe. To determine whether these activation patterns are evident at a single-subject level, we conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during five tasks investigating sensorimotor (finger tapping), language (verb generation), spatial (mental rotation), working memory (N-back), and emotional processing (viewing images from the International Affective Picture System). Finger tapping activated the ipsilateral anterior lobe (lobules IV-V) as well as lobules VI and VIII. Activation during verb generation was found in right lobules VII and VIIIA. Mental rotation activated left-lateralized clusters in lobules VII-VIIIA, VI-Crus I, and midline VIIAt. The N-back task showed bilateral activation in right lobules VI-Crus I and left lobules VIIB-VIIIA. Cerebellar activation was evident bilaterally in lobule VI while viewing arousing vs. neutral images. This fMRI study provides the first proof of principle demonstration that there is topographic organization of motor execution vs. cognitive/emotional domains within the cerebellum of a single individual, likely reflecting the anatomical specificity of cerebro-cerebellar circuits underlying different task domains. Inter-subject variability of motor and non-motor topography remains to be determined.

Highlights

The cerebellum has long been recognized as essential for the control of posture and movement [20,35]
Stoodley et al / An functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of intra-individual functional topography in the human cerebellum extending into medial lobule VI, as well as in lobule VIII, which is regarded as the second somatosensory representation [97]
In terms of task selection, our goal was to explore the functional patterns found within the cerebellum in a single subject, and we were limited to tasks that reliably activate the cerebellum in neuroimaging studies

Summary

Introduction

The cerebellum has long been recognized as essential for the control of posture and movement [20,35]. The CCAS is postulated to result from disruptions in the distributed neural circuits linking the cerebellum with associative and limbic/paralimbic regions of the cerebral hemispheres, producing dysmetria of thought analogous to dysmetria of motor control [71,73,74,81]. The hemispheric component of lobule VII (Crus I, Crus II and lobule VIIB) does not receive motor inputs, and was silent in the sensorimotor physiological experiments of Snider and colleagues [86,87]. The cerebellar hemispheres, largely comprised of lobules VI and VII, have expanded massively through evolution [4,52,96], along with the cerebral association areas and neodentate nucleus [49, 96], and are linked with non-motor areas of the cerebral cortex [79]

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