The Cerebellum’s Relationship to Language Function Following Perinatal Stroke 

While recent studies have demonstrated the association between the cerebellum and higher-order cognitive functioning, it is still unclear how volumetric differences of specific regions of interests within the cerebellum across typical and atypical development are related to language function. We have done so by measuring the volume of cerebellar subregions of healthy controls, and compared the volume to behavioral measures of language function. We then followed with an analysis of the cerebellum’s relationship to language function following perinatal stroke, which provides us with a greater knowledge of the impact of a cortical injury on cerebellar development and the cognitive outcomes of such changes by again measuring and comparing the volume of cerebellar subregions to language measures. 

We report several novel findings that contribute to the growing understanding of the cerebellum’s relationship to language function. We found that greater right laterality of lobules IV and VIIb predicted performance on expressive language measures in typical development. We also found that following an early injury to the cerebral cortex's left hemisphere, there was a bilateral association of cerebellar lobules to language measures. Specifically, we found greater right laterality of the cerebellar cortex, lobule IV, and Crus I predicted higher scores on the Expressive Vocabulary Test. While greater left lateralization of lobule VI predicted expressive language and lobule VIIIa predicted grammatical judgment, especially early in development, and greater left lateralization of lobule IX predicted receptive vocabulary. Implications of the findings of volumetric association to language function and post-stroke development within the cerebellum are discussed.  

Major Professor: Dr. Anthony Steven Dick