Effective Connectivity of the Human Cerebellum during Visual Attention

• DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0678-12.2012
• Publication Date: 2012-08-15T16:28:32Z
• Authors: Thilo Kellermann; Christina Regenbogen; Maarten De Vos; Carolin Mößnang; Andreas Finkelmeyer; Ute Habel
• Keywords: Adult; Male; Analysis of Variance; Brain Mapping; Time Factors; Bayes Theorem; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Oxygen; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Nonlinear Dynamics; Cerebellum; Neural Pathways; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Linear Models; Psychophysics; Reaction Time; Humans; Attention; Female; Visual Pathways; Photic Stimulation

Insights from both lesion and neuroimaging studies increasingly substantiate the view that human cerebellum not only serves motor control but also supports various cognitive processes. Higher functions like working memory or executive have been associated with phylogenetically younger parts of cerebellum, crus I II. Functional connectivity corroborate this notion as activation correlates activity in numerous areas cerebral cortex. Moreover, these cerebrocerebellar loops were shown to be topographically organized. We used an attention-to-motion paradigm elaborate on effective cerebellar during visual attention. Psychophysiological interaction analyses demonstrated enhanced cerebellum—during attention—with dorsal stream regions including posterior parietal cortex (PPC) left secondary (V5). Dynamic causal modeling revealed a modulation connections V5 PPC by Remarkably, influence which exerted was reduced attention, resulting suppression sensitivity bottom-up information. populations inputs increased under This might underscore presumed role state estimator provides hierarchically lower (V5) top-down predictions, turn based endogenous cerebellum. These results are line formulations attention predictive coding, where increases precision neuronal may encode prediction error.