The Cerebellum and Language: The Story So Far

Abstract

Background: The cerebellum was traditionally considered to be exclusively involved in the coordination of voluntary movement, gait, posture, balance and motor speech. However, this view was challenged by recent neuroanatomical, neuroimaging and clinical findings, providing preliminary evidence of a cerebellar contribution to linguistic functioning. Aim: To discuss the role of the cerebellum in a variety of linguistic functions and to explore the underlying mechanisms. Methods: A literature search was conducted via electronic databases. Exclusion criteria were: disorders following congenital cerebellar lesions, motor speech disorders, cognitive deficits outside the language sphere, neuropsychiatric disorders and insufficient information on the cerebellar role in language. Abstracts were not included. In addition, only adult subjects were taken into consideration. Results: A variety of linguistic disorders were found to occur following acquired cerebellar lesions: (1) impaired phonological and semantic fluency; (2) agrammatism (at morphological and sentence level); (3) naming and word finding difficulties; (4) cerebellar-induced aphasia; (5) reading difficulties; (6) writing problems, and (7) higher-level language deficits, including disturbed listening comprehension, impaired language proficiency and metalinguistic ability. Several hypotheses have been suggested to explain the nature of the cerebellar contribution to language. However, findings are not univocal. Conclusion: The cerebellum appears to be involved in a variety of linguistic functions. However, the precise nature of this contribution is not clear yet. Linguistic, neuroimaging, neuroanatomical and neuropsychological studies should be combined in order to disentangle the specific contribution of the cerebellum to linguistic processing.

Consensus Paper: Language and the Cerebellum: an Ongoing Enigma

“…Clinical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies confirm that the cerebellum contributes to grammar processing, in both the expressive and receptive domain [29, 40, 86, 156–160]. In the 1990s a possible role of the cerebellum in morphological, syntactic and lexical aspects of grammar was for the first time explored.…”

“…Since then cerebellar involvement in linguistic processes has been studied by advanced neuroimaging methods in healthy subjects and a number of studies have been published focusing on a variety of linguistic dysfunctions following cerebellar lesions of different etiologies in children as well as adults. Reviews of the role of the cerebellum in nonmotor language functions are provided by Gordon [26], Mariën et al [27], Paquier and Mariën [28], De Smet et al [29, 30], Beaton and Mariën [31], Murdoch [32], and Highnam and Bleile [33]. …”

The Ontogenesis of Language Impairment in Autism: A Neuropsychological Perspective

“…In addition, the cerebellum has been implicated in speech production and perception (Ackermann et al 2007), and evidence points to this structure's involvement in semantic and grammatical processing (Baillieux et al 2009;De Smet et al 2007). Anomalies of cerebellar cellular organization (Bauman and Kemper 2005) and anatomical structure (Courchesne et al 2005;Schmitz and Rezaie 2008) have long been linked to AD with recent studies also reporting anomalies of activation during the performance of language tasks by individuals with AD (Harris et al 2006).…”

MRI Surface-Based Brain Morphometry in Egyptian Autistic and Typically Developing Children

“…De Smet et al [49] reported that cerebellar abnormalities cause word-finding difficulty, disturbed listening comprehension, impaired metalinguistic abilities together with difficulty in understanding social cues.…”