Cortex
Volume 47, Issue 1 , Page 1, January 2011

Cognition and the cerebellum

  • Sergio Della Sala

      Affiliations

    • Corresponding Author InformationHuman Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology Department, University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JZ, UK.

Human Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology Department, University of Edinburgh, UK

published online 12 July 2010.

Article Outline

 

A recent special issue of Cortex (issue 7, 2010) encompassed a collection of papers tackling the “enigma” (Beaton and Mariën, 2010) of the relationship between the cerebellum and cognition. This included two reviews on the role played by the cerebellum in associative learning (Timmann et al., 2010) and in language (Murdoch, 2010). The eight Research Reports were on the development of human cerebellum (Cantalupo and Hopkins, 2010), on its topographical organisation (Stoodley and Schmahmann, 2010), on general neuropsychological profile (Baillieux et al., 2010) associated with cerebellar lesions or on cerebellar activations during the performance of executive or working memory tasks (Durisko and Fiez, 2010, Marvel and Desmond, 2010). The three further papers dealt with the effects of cerebellar malformations or tumors on children’s development (Catsman-Berrevoets and Aarsen, 2010, Davis et al., 2010, Tavano and Borgatti, 2010).

As anticipated in their editorial by the guest editors of the special issue (Beaton and Mariën, 2010), we now continue with the discussion on the same theme by publishing in the Discussion Forum of this issue, a series of six position papers. The same Belgian artist Igor Verpoorten, who provided the cover for the special issue, kindly agreed to paint another one for us, which is depicted on the cover of this issue.

We hope that you will find this discussion stimulating.

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References 

  1. Baillieux H, De Smet HJ, Dobbeleir A, Paquier PF, De Deyn PP, Mariën P. Cognitive and affective disturbances following focal cerebellar damage in adults: A neuropsychological and SPECT study. Cortex. 2010;46(7):869–879
  2. Beaton A, Mariën P. Language, cognition and the cerebellum: Grappling with an enigma. Cortex. 2010;46(7):811–820
  3. Cantalupo C, Hopkins W. The cerebellum and its contribution to complex tasks in higher primates: A comparative perspective. Cortex. 2010;46(7):821–830
  4. Catsman-Berrevoets CE, Aarsen FK. The spectrum of neurobehavioural deficits in the Posterior Fossa Syndrome in children after cerebellar tumour surgery. Cortex. 2010;46(7):933–946
  5. Davis EE, Pitchford NJ, Jaspan T, McArthur D, Walker D. Development of cognitive and motor function following cerebellar tumour injury sustained in early childhood. Cortex. 2010;46(7):919–932
  6. Durisko C, Fiez JA. Functional activation in the cerebellum during working memory and simple speech tasks. Cortex. 2010;46(7):896–906
  7. Marvel CL, Desmond JE. The contributions of cerebro-cerebellar circuitry to executive verbal working memory. Cortex. 2010;46(7):880–895
  8. Murdoch BE. The cerebellum and language: Historical perspective and review. Cortex. 2010;46(7):858–868
  9. Stoodley CJ, Schmahmann JD. Evidence for topographic organization in the cerebellum of motor control versus cognitive and affective processing. Cortex. 2010;46(7):831–844
  10. Tavano A, Borgatti R. Evidence for a link among cognition, language and emotion in cerebellar malformations. Cortex. 2010;46(7):907–918
  11. Timmann D, Drepper J, Frings M, Maschke M, Richter S, Gerwig M, et al. The human cerebellum contributes to motor, emotional and cognitive associative learning. A review. Cortex. 2010;46(7):845–857

PII: S0010-9452(10)00156-5

doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2010.05.010

Cortex
Volume 47, Issue 1 , Page 1, January 2011

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