This is not who you are: The posterior cerebellum and stereotype-inconsistent action sequences

Abstract

Recent research has indicated that the posterior cerebellum plays a crucial role in social cognition by encoding sequences of social actions. This study investigates its role in learning sequences of stereotype-implying actions by group members. We presented a set of five sentences that each described a group member who performed either stereotype-consistent or inconsistent actions. Participants were instructed to memorize the temporal order of the sentences and infer a common stereotype of the group. As a comparison, we included control conditions where participants had to memorize sequences of nonsocial consistent events or simply read stereotype-consistent sentences without memorizing their order. The results showed that the posterior cerebellum was strongly activated when participants were memorizing the order of the social actions, as opposed to simply reading these social actions. More importantly, when the social actions were inconsistent as opposed to consistent with the stereotype of the group, the posterior cerebellum was activated more strongly. This activation occurred together with cortical recruitment of the mentalizing network involving the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) during social actions, and additionally the conflict monitoring network involving the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and posterior medial frontal cortex (pmFC) during stereotype-inconsistent actions. These findings suggest that the cerebellum supports not only learning of low-level action sequences, but also of their high-level social implications.