Ben-Yehudah Gal, Fiez Julie A
Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2008 Dec;1145:260-74. doi: 10.1196/annals.1416.015.
The relationship between cerebellar function and reading abilities is unclear. One theory of developmental dyslexia implicates the cerebellum in this reading disorder. Neuroimaging studies in normal readers consistently show cerebellar activation in tasks that involve reading. However, neuropsychological evidence for a relationship between cerebellar function and skilled reading is sparse. To further examine the role of the cerebellum in reading, we assessed reading skills and phonological processing in a group of patients with focal damage to the cerebellum. The patients' accuracy in naming single words and nonwords and their reading fluency and comprehension did not differ from that of age- and education-matched healthy controls. The patients' performance on phonological awareness and phonological memory tasks was also within the range of the control group, although their performance was highly variable. In contrast, cerebellar damage did significantly compromise performance in two other tasks associated with phonological processing. In a visual rhyme judgment task, a subset of the patient group was impaired on items with a mismatch between orthographic and phonological information. On a verbal working memory task, the cerebellar compared to the control group recalled fewer items from a list of nonwords, but not from lists of familiar items. On the basis of the patients' pattern of behavioral impairments, we propose that cerebellar damage affects an articulatory monitoring process. Our findings indicate that intact cerebellar function is not necessary for skilled reading; however, we cannot exclude the potential contribution of the cerebellum to reading acquisition.
小脑功能与阅读能力之间的关系尚不清楚。一种发育性阅读障碍理论认为小脑与这种阅读障碍有关。对正常阅读者的神经影像学研究一致表明，在涉及阅读的任务中，小脑会被激活。然而，关于小脑功能与熟练阅读之间关系的神经心理学证据却很少。为了进一步研究小脑在阅读中的作用，我们评估了一组小脑局灶性损伤患者的阅读技能和语音处理能力。这些患者在单字和非字命名方面的准确性、阅读流畅性和阅读理解能力与年龄和教育程度相匹配的健康对照组并无差异。他们在语音意识和语音记忆任务上的表现也在对照组范围内，尽管其表现差异很大。相比之下，小脑损伤确实显著损害了与语音处理相关的另外两项任务的表现。在视觉押韵判断任务中，患者组的一部分在正字法和语音信息不匹配的项目上表现受损。在言语工作记忆任务中，与对照组相比，小脑损伤患者从非字列表中回忆出的项目较少，但从熟悉项目列表中回忆出的项目数量没有差异。根据患者的行为损伤模式，我们提出小脑损伤会影响发音监测过程。我们的研究结果表明，完整的小脑功能对于熟练阅读并非必要；然而，我们不能排除小脑对阅读习得的潜在贡献。
