Cerebellar regions involved in adaptation to force field and visuomotor perturbation

Abstract

Studies with patients and functional magnetic resonance imaging investigations have demonstrated that the cerebellum plays an essential role in adaptation to visuomotor rotation and force field perturbation. To identify cerebellar structures involved in the two tasks, we studied 19 patients with focal lesions after cerebellar infarction. Focal lesions were manually traced on magnetic resonance images and normalized using a new spatially unbiased template of the cerebellum. In addition, we reanalyzed data from 14 patients with cerebellar degeneration using voxel-based morphometry. We found that adjacent regions with only little overlap in the anterior arm area (lobules IV to VI) are important for adaptation in both tasks. Although adaptation to the force field task lay more anteriorly (lobules IV and V), lobule VI was more important for the visuomotor task. In addition, regions in the posterolateral cerebellum (Crus I and II) contributed to both tasks. No consistent involvement of the posterior arm region (lobule VIII) was found. Independence of the two kinds of adaptation is further supported by findings that performance in one task did not correlate to performance in the other task. Our results show that the anterior arm area of the cerebellum is functionally divided into a more posterior part of lobule VI, extending into lobule V, related to visuomotor adaption, and a more anterior part including lobules IV and V, related to force field adaption. The posterolateral cerebellum may process common aspects of both tasks.

Behavioural and neural basis of anomalous motor learning in children with autism

“…When relating this volume to learning from error, we found a main effect of visual sensitivity and a group Âproprioceptive sensitivity interaction. The main effect of visual sensitivity on volume echoes that which was described in Donchin et al (2012): that visual motor adaptation depended on integrity of this region, and greater volume will allow for improved performance. For our task, higher visual sensitivity can be considered comparable to improved visual performance, which correlates with higher volume.…”

“…Reach adaptation is known to depend on the integrity of the cerebellum (Smith and Shadmehr, 2005;CriscimagnaHemminger et al, 2010;Donchin et al, 2012), in particular those regions known to be involved in sensorimotor control. Thus, we hypothesized that the behavioural differences between groups may be associated with anatomical differences in the cerebellum.…”

“…But do these sensorimotor maps relate to motor adaptation? In a study of cerebellar patients using voxel-based morphometry, or a voxelby-voxel quantification relating the density of grey matter to performance in a reaching task, Donchin et al (2012) found that anterior regions from lobules IV-VI were related to the ability to adapt in a force field or visual motor rotation paradigm. Importantly, the region of the cerebellum most relevant to learning in our task seems to correspond to the sensorimotor cerebellum described by Buckner et al (2011).…”

“…Although damage to the cerebellum can lead to a host of cognitive deficits (Schmahmann and Sherman, 1998), a prominent symptom of cerebellar damage is motor learning impairment (Smith and Shadmehr, 2005;Xu-Wilson et al, 2009;Criscimagna-Hemminger et al, 2010;Donchin et al, 2012). Cerebellar dependent motor learning is believed to occur through the construction of internal models of action in which the brain predicts the sensory consequences of a movement (Izawa et al, 2012a).…”

PET Mapping for Brain–Computer Interface Stimulation of the Ventroposterior Medial Nucleus of the Thalamus in Rats with Implanted Electrodes

“…The cerebellum has been implicated in the control of actions and the acquisition of motor skills (18). In particular, the posterolateral regions (crus I and II) have been shown to be involved in adaptations to force fields and to visuomotor perturbation (19). Taking these findings from the literature and our findings together, we suggest that the insula and cerebellum may be involved in coordination of movement and control of the turning angle.…”