Consensus Paper: Cerebellum and Social Cognition

Frank Van Overwalle,Laura C Rice,Libera Siciliano,Michela Lupo,Marco Michelutti,Elien Heleven,Chiara Ferrari,Arseny A Sokolov,Zaira Cattaneo,Min Pu,John D E Gabrieli,Catherine J Stoodley,Qianying Ma,Jeremy D Schmahmann,Kim Van Dun,Larry R Vandervert ,Giusy Olivito,Mario Manto,Silvia Clausi,Xavier Guell,Maria Leggio

doi:10.1007/s12311-020-01155-1

Abstract

The traditional view on the cerebellum is that it controls motor behavior. Although recent work has revealed that the cerebellum supports also nonmotor functions such as cognition and affect, only during the last 5 years it has become evident that the cerebellum also plays an important social role. This role is evident in social cognition based on interpreting goal-directed actions through the movements of individuals (social “mirroring”) which is very close to its original role in motor learning, as well as in social understanding of other individuals’ mental state, such as their intentions, beliefs, past behaviors, future aspirations, and personality traits (social “mentalizing”). Most of this mentalizing role is supported by the posterior cerebellum (e.g., Crus I and II). The most dominant hypothesis is that the cerebellum assists in learning and understanding social action sequences, and so facilitates social cognition by supporting optimal predictions about imminent or future social interaction and cooperation. This consensus paper brings together experts from different fields to discuss recent efforts in understanding the role of the cerebellum in social cognition, and the understanding of social behaviors and mental states by others, its effect on clinical impairments such as cerebellar ataxia and autism spectrum disorder, and how the cerebellum can become a potential target for noninvasive brain stimulation as a therapeutic intervention. We report on the most recent empirical findings and techniques for understanding and manipulating cerebellar circuits in humans. Cerebellar circuitry appears now as a key structure to elucidate social interactions.

Highlights

Introduction and Evolutionary PastIntroduction (Frank Van Overwalle, Mario Manto)This consensus paper starts with an introduction on the role of the cerebellum in social cognition by Frank Van Overwalle and Mario Manto and introduces the less-experienced reader into the functional anatomy and computations of the cerebellum with respect to social cognition
The relationship between social cognition and other motor and nonmotor domains in the cerebellum is further elaborated by Xavier Guell, John Gabrieli, and Jeremy Schmahmann. Their impressive analysis and overview of the twofold task and process gradients in the cerebellum provide again evidence for a domain-specific contribution to social cognition by the cerebellum. In their novel metaanalysis, Qianying Ma and Frank Van Overwalle further document that cerebellar Crus II is mainly involved in social mentalizing
Since the cerebellum apparently is key to the refinement of the dynamics of grasp [60], and since, according to Stout and Hecht’s [41] analysis at the beginning of this article, that refinement is socially driven, the evolution of tools was largely a product of the evolving social cerebellum as described by Van Overwalle, Manto, Leggio, and Delgado-Garcia [20]

Summary

Introduction

This consensus paper starts with an introduction on the role of the cerebellum in social cognition by Frank Van Overwalle and Mario Manto and introduces the less-experienced reader into the functional anatomy and computations of the cerebellum with respect to social cognition This is followed by a discussion on the potential evolutionary role of stone-tool making for the social cerebellum by Larry Vandervert. Prior reports on the social role of the cerebellum were often limited to side aspects of affective processing and anecdotally described cerebellar patients having affective deficits. These reports focused on the understanding of affect in facial expressions of others [1] without much attention to higher-level mental states of others. A novel collaboration between researchers from the field of social neuroscience (Frank Van Overwalle) and the cerebellum (Peter Marien and Mario Manto) resulted in the discovery of the important social function of the cerebellum [2, 3] which instigated novel research on the potential role of the cerebellum in social

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