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Brain & Language 161 (2016) 1–3

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Brain & Language

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/b&l

Editorial

The cerebellum and language: Persistent themes and findings

Julie A. Fiez
Departments of Psychology and Neuroscience, Learning Research and Development Center, and Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, 3939 O’Hara Street, University of
Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

article info

Article history: This special issue brings together a set of articles that focus on the cerebellum and language. Contributors
Available online 20 September 2016 were specifically invited from relative newcomers to this research topic, as a way to draw attention to
perspectives and findings that might otherwise be overlooked. This editorial provides an overview of the
issue from a historical context that draws upon more than 25 years of research on the linguistic cerebellum.

2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In the early 1990s, the contributions of the cerebellum to cogni
tion and language became an emergent topic in the cognitive neu
roscience literature. As one metric of this phenomenon, Fiez (1996)
graphed the growth of the relevant literature from a near-zero
baseline in 1980 to an accumulated body of more than 100 publi
cations by 1995. Interest was sparked by speculative review arti
cles that applied motor theories of cerebellar function to cognitive
and language processing, using a small body of neu roanatomical,
neurophysiological, and neuropsychological findings for support
(e.g., Dow, 1974; Ito, 1993; Keele & Ivry, 1990; Leiner, Leiner, &
Dow, 1986, 1987; Roland, 1993; Schmahmann, 1996; Watson,
1978). At roughly the same time, the emergence of func tional
neuroimaging as a new tool was yielding surprising evidence of
cerebellar activation linked to cognitive and linguistic task demands
(Petersen, Fox, Posner, Mintun, & Raichle, 1989). In the subsequent
years, interest in the linguistic cerebellum has contin ued. Indeed,
searching the PubMed database using the terms ‘‘cere bellum” and
‘‘language” now identifies more than 2000 scientific publications
each year.
The growth of research on the cerebellum and language is
impressive. However, it pales in contrast to the more than 20,000
publications identified by the terms ‘‘brain” and ‘‘language” appearing
in 2015 alone. Given this difference in scientific focus, it should
come as no surprise that the contributions of the cerebel lum to
language (and cognition more generally) remain something of an
enigma (Marien et al., 2014). Nonetheless, significant pro gress has
been made: Current research now focuses on how – not if -- the
cerebellum contributes to language processing.
Excellent reviews of the accumulated literature on the cerebel
lum and language, including those in an edited book on the topic,
are available for the interested reader (e.g., Buckner, 2013; Marien
E-mail address: fiez@pitt.edu
et al., 2014; Marien & Manto, 2016; Stoodley & Stein, 2013). As one
would expect, these reviews are predominantly authored by indi
viduals with a long history of research on the linguistic cerebellum.
In contrast, the contributions to this special issue were invited from
relative newcomers to the topic, as a way to feature new ideas and
findings that might otherwise be overlooked. Contribu tors includes
researchers with a long-standing interest in the cere bellum who
have more recently concentrated on studies of language processing,
as well as those with a long-standing interest in language whose
findings have led them to become interested in the cerebellum. The
resulting issue provides a current perspective on theoretical themes
and empirical findings that have persisted across 25 years of
research on the non-motor functions of the cerebellum.
One persistent theme is the idea that the cellular structure and
connectivity of the cerebellum follows general organizational prin
ciples, and therefore it may perform a common type of computa tion
across motor and non-motor domains. In line with this idea, Ito
(1993) was an early proponent of the idea that the cerebellum makes
use of internal models of a current state to make predictions about
a future state, so that ongoing motor (or potentially cogni tive)
performance can be dynamically optimized. In this issue, the
continuation of this broad idea can be seen in the review by
Argyropoulos (2016) and Moberget et al. (2016), both of which
consider the role of the cerebellum in linguistic prediction. In the
linguistic literature, prediction is broadly conceptualized as the use
of a current linguistic state to predict a future state (Pickering &
Garrod, 2013). For instance, an internal representation of a partially
completed sentence might be used to predict the likely syntactic and
semantic features of an upcoming word. The concepts of prediction
generation and prediction error have clear analogies to the concepts
of internal models and sensorimotor prediction error in the motor
literature. Extending these ideas into

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2 J. A. Fiez / Brain & Language 161 (2016) 1–3
the linguistic domain, it becomes possible to see how consistent patterns of syntactic
structure and semantic associations could be used as a basis for linguistic predictions via
the use of internal models that involve the cerebellum (Argyropoulos, 2016).
In the motor literature, internal models are presumed to sup port both dynamic motor
coordination as well as motor learning (Ito, 2008; Thach, Goodkin, & Keating, 1992). The
general idea is that the cerebellum is involved in detecting discrepancies between
predicted and actual states, so that prediction error signals can be used to drive the
learning that improves future performance. Some of the early evidence extending this
idea to the domain of language came from a single-case study of an individual with focal
injury to the right lateral cerebellum. He exhibited abnormal learning on word association
tasks, such as a verb generation task involving the repeated production of a related verb
for each of a set of nouns (Fiez, Petersen, Cheney, & Raichle, 1992). In the current issue,
Lesage, Nailer, Miall, and Language (2016) use neuroimaging to relate brain activity
during language learning to later knowledge gains. They find evidence that the recruitment
of cerebellar, but not cerebral, regions during learning correlates with a subsequent
measure of knowledge consolation. The results highlight the use of neuroimaging as a
tool for uncovering the circuits that support adaptive plasticity within the language system.
Another theoretical strand within the cerebellum and cognition literature has been the
idea that it plays a crucial role in timing and sequencing dynamics. Again, this idea has
its roots in the motor lit erature, where it has been clear for decades that cerebellar dys
function impairs motor coordination and other timing-related aspects of motor function
(Llinas, 1974). Ivry and Keele (1989) extended these ideas into the cognitive domain, by
finding that individuals with cerebellar damage exhibit impairments in both the production
and perception of temporal sequences. In this issue, Schwatze and Kotz (2016) bring
together the proposed roles of the cerebellum in prediction and timing, by focusing on
temporal structure in speech perception. They argue that the temporal struc ture of
speech, at multiple and distinct levels, is itself a source of information that can be used to
dynamically enhance speech per ception. Moreover, they speculate about the potential
role of the cerebellum in using synchrony as a mechanism for coordinating frontal and
temporal regions within the cerebral cortex in service of speech perception. The result is
a very modern twist on a long standing idea.
The articles in this issue also draw attention to domains of lan guage function for
which there has been persistent evidence for cerebellar involvement. One domain is
reading. Fawcett, Nicolson, and Dean (1996) observed that children with develop mental
dyslexia exhibit impairments in motor function that are similar to those observed in
individuals with cerebellar dysfunc tion. This led them to propose a cerebellar deficit
hypothesis of developmental dyslexia. It has been a minor strand within the reading
literature, but one that warrants increased attention (Stoodley & Stein, 2013). In this issue,
new contributions to this area of research are provided by Fernandez et al. (2016) and
Moberget et al. (2016). Fernandez et al. tackle this question by using diffusion tensor
imaging to contrast the integrity of cerebro-cerebellar connectivity in children with versus
without a reading impairment. They evidence of enhanced connectivity between the
anterior cerebellum and reading-related regions in the temporal, parietal, and frontal
cortices. They conclude the cere bellum has a regulatory effect on cortical pathways for
reading.
The results from Moberget et al. provide insight into the mecha nisms that might underlie
cerebellar regulation of the reading net work. They report evidence that damage to the
anterior cerebellum reduces the functional activation of auditory cortex and parietal
operculum during silent word reading. To account for these results, they suggest the
cerebellum may be involved in the use of inner
speech to learn audio-visual associations, potentially through the use of inner speech.
Semantic processing is another aspect of language function for which there is strong
evidence of cerebellar involvement. Indeed, some of the earliest evidence for a linguistic
cerebellum came from a neuroimaging study that revealed greater activation in the right
lateral cerebellum when individuals were asked to say aloud a semantically related verb
in response to a visually presented noun, as compared to merely reading the visually
presented noun aloud (Petersen et al., 1989). In the current issue, Lesage et al. (2016)
demonstrate a connection between the cerebellum and language learning for a related
task involving vocabulary learning. Other articles in this issue help to bound the role of
the cerebellum in semantic processing. Moberget et al. (2016) find that individuals with
resections of cerebellar tissue that spare the right lateral cere bellum exhibit the typical
neuroimaging signatures of semantic prediction, a result that accords with their prior
localization of semantic prediction based on imaging neurotypical subjects. In his review,
Argypoulus (2016) makes an important distinction between associative versus categorical
semantic relationships, with damage to the cerebellum affecting associative semantic pro
cessing but leaving categorical semantic knowledge largely or fully intact. Thus, similar to
the conclusions of Fernandez et al. (2016) for reading, the cerebellum appears to have a
modulatory effect on cerebral regions involved in semantic processing. To harken back to
ideas in the motor literature, ‘‘the cerebellum may be viewed as an in-line corrective
filter” (Llinas, 1974), as opposed to the originator of cognitive or motor activity.
In closing, over the past 25 years there have been persistent themes about the
underlying nature of the linguistic cerebellum and accumulated research findings that
point towards productive avenues for continued research. Relative newcomers to the
study of the linguistic cerebellum contributed the articles in this special issue. The resulting
fresh perspectives and novel data move the field forward while retaining a connection to
longstanding ideas.
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