The cerebellum and cognitive function: anatomical evidence from a transdiagnostic sample

Abstract

AbstractIntroductionThe cerebellum, most known for its role in motor control, exerts a key role in cognition. Multiple lines of evidence across human functional, lesion and animal data point to a role of the cerebellum, in particular of Crus I, Crus II and Lobule VIIB, in cognitive function. However, whether cerebellar substrates pertaining to distinct facets of cognitive function exist is not known.MethodsWe analyzed structural neuroimaging data from the Healthy Brain Network (HBN). Cerebellar parcellation was performed via a standard validated automated segmentation pipeline (CERES) with stringent visual quality check (n = 662 subjects retained from initial n = 1452). We used data-driven canonical correlation analyses (CCA) to examine regional gray matter volumetric (GMV) differences in association to cognitive function assessed with the NIH Toolbox Cognition Domain (NIH-TB). Our multivariate analyses accounted for psychopathology severity, age, sex, scan location and intracranial volume.ResultsMultivariate CCA uncovered a significant correlation between two components entailing a latent cognitive canonical variate composed of NIH-TB subscales and the brain canonical variate (cerebellar regions’ GMV and intracranial volume, ICV). A bootstrapping and a permutation procedure ensured the results are statistically significant and the CCA model, stable. The identified components correspond to only partly shared cerebellar -cognitive function relationship with a first map encompassing cognitive flexibility (r=0.89) and speed of processing (r=0.65) associated with regional gray matter volume in Crus II (r=0.57) and Lobule X (r=0.59) and a second map including the Crus I (r=0.49) and Lobule VI (r=0.49) associated with cognitive control (r=-0.51). Working memory associations were similarly present in both these maps (Crus II, Lobule X, Crus I and Lobule VI) for the first (r=0.52) and second (r=0.51) component.DiscussionOur results show evidence in favor of structural sub-specialization in the cerebellum, independently of psychopathology contributions to cognitive function and brain structure. Overall, these findings highlight a prominent role for the human cerebellum in cognitive function for flexible and stable adaptive behavior.