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Deficits in reflexive covert attention following cerebellar injury

Traditionally the cerebellum has been known for its important role in coordinating motor output. Over the past 15 years numerous studies have indicated that the cerebellum plays a role in a variety of cognitive functions including working memory, language, perceptual functions, and emotion. In addit...

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Autores principales: Striemer, Christopher L., Cantelmi, David, Cusimano, Michael D., Danckert, James A., Schweizer, Tom A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4523795/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26300756
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00428
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author Striemer, Christopher L.
Cantelmi, David
Cusimano, Michael D.
Danckert, James A.
Schweizer, Tom A.
author_facet Striemer, Christopher L.
Cantelmi, David
Cusimano, Michael D.
Danckert, James A.
Schweizer, Tom A.
author_sort Striemer, Christopher L.
collection PubMed
description Traditionally the cerebellum has been known for its important role in coordinating motor output. Over the past 15 years numerous studies have indicated that the cerebellum plays a role in a variety of cognitive functions including working memory, language, perceptual functions, and emotion. In addition, recent work suggests that regions of the cerebellum involved in eye movements also play a role in controlling covert visual attention. Here we investigated whether regions of the cerebellum that are not strictly tied to the control of eye movements might also contribute to covert attention. To address this question we examined the effects of circumscribed cerebellar lesions on reflexive covert attention in a group of patients (n = 11) without any gross motor or oculomotor deficits, and compared their performance to a group of age-matched controls (n = 11). Results indicated that the traditional RT advantage for validly cued targets was significantly smaller at the shortest (50 ms) SOA for cerebellar patients compared to controls. Critically, a lesion overlap analysis indicated that this deficit in the rapid deployment of attention was linked to damage in Crus I and Crus II of the lateral cerebellum. Importantly, both cerebellar regions have connections to non-motor regions of the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices—regions important for controlling visuospatial attention. Together, these data provide converging evidence that both lateral and midline regions of the cerebellum play an important role in the control of reflexive covert visual attention.
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spelling pubmed-45237952015-08-21 Deficits in reflexive covert attention following cerebellar injury Striemer, Christopher L. Cantelmi, David Cusimano, Michael D. Danckert, James A. Schweizer, Tom A. Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience Traditionally the cerebellum has been known for its important role in coordinating motor output. Over the past 15 years numerous studies have indicated that the cerebellum plays a role in a variety of cognitive functions including working memory, language, perceptual functions, and emotion. In addition, recent work suggests that regions of the cerebellum involved in eye movements also play a role in controlling covert visual attention. Here we investigated whether regions of the cerebellum that are not strictly tied to the control of eye movements might also contribute to covert attention. To address this question we examined the effects of circumscribed cerebellar lesions on reflexive covert attention in a group of patients (n = 11) without any gross motor or oculomotor deficits, and compared their performance to a group of age-matched controls (n = 11). Results indicated that the traditional RT advantage for validly cued targets was significantly smaller at the shortest (50 ms) SOA for cerebellar patients compared to controls. Critically, a lesion overlap analysis indicated that this deficit in the rapid deployment of attention was linked to damage in Crus I and Crus II of the lateral cerebellum. Importantly, both cerebellar regions have connections to non-motor regions of the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices—regions important for controlling visuospatial attention. Together, these data provide converging evidence that both lateral and midline regions of the cerebellum play an important role in the control of reflexive covert visual attention. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-08-04 /pmc/articles/PMC4523795/ /pubmed/26300756 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00428 Text en Copyright © 2015 Striemer, Cantelmi, Cusimano, Danckert and Schweizer. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Striemer, Christopher L.
Cantelmi, David
Cusimano, Michael D.
Danckert, James A.
Schweizer, Tom A.
Deficits in reflexive covert attention following cerebellar injury
title Deficits in reflexive covert attention following cerebellar injury
title_full Deficits in reflexive covert attention following cerebellar injury
title_fullStr Deficits in reflexive covert attention following cerebellar injury
title_full_unstemmed Deficits in reflexive covert attention following cerebellar injury
title_short Deficits in reflexive covert attention following cerebellar injury
title_sort deficits in reflexive covert attention following cerebellar injury
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4523795/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26300756
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00428
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