Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Preparatory Function in the Human Cerebellum

University Of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas TX

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Allen will conduct a year-long investigation of a theory that the function of the cerebellum is to predict and prepare the internal conditions needed for mental or motor operations. The cerebellum was thought for many decades to be devoted solely to the coordination of movement. However, a number of recent neurology, psychiatry, and neuroimaging findings indicate the cerebellum may be involved in a wide range of cognitive, emotional, and sensory. These findings do not yet clearly indicate what role the cerebellum serves. One recent proposal is that the cerebellum is involved in predicting and preparing for mental and motor operations and that to perform this function, it learns predictive relationships within sequences of neural activities. Dr. Allen will attempt to test this proposal using functional magnetic resonance imaging of humans performing a visual selection attention task. Blood flow activity in the cerebellum will be recorded as human volunteers alternate between passive viewing of and selective attention to visual stimuli. During the visual selective attention tasks, subjects will passively listen to a structured sequence of tones that predicts the appearance of visual targets. As subjects learn to improve their performance by attending to the predictive pattern of the tones, the intensity and distribution of activity in the cerebellum and elsewhere will be used to evaluate Dr. Allen's hypothesis. The findings of this study should be useful for the development of a new account of cerebellar function. The proposed theory is one of the few to adequately encompass the apparent diversity of the cerebellar function and testing it should bring us closer to understanding the fundamental role the cerebellum plays in the central nervous system. The cerebellum is a large and intricate brain structure with connections to many other neural systems. Clarifying its function will modify our understanding of many other aspects of brain function. Such advances are also expected to have significant implications for understanding symptoms of cerebellar dysfunction.