Beuriat Pierre-Aurélien, Cohen-Zimerman Shira, Smith Gretchen N L, Krueger Frank, Gordon Barry, Grafman Jordan
Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Brain Injury Research, Shirley Ryan Ability Lab, Chicago, IL, United States.
Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States.
Front Neurol. 2020 Dec 23;11:593490. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2020.593490. eCollection 2020.
We investigated whether the cerebellum plays a critical or supportive role in in executive and emotion processes in adults. Many investigators now espouse the hypothesis that participants with cerebellar lesions experience executive functions and emotions (EE) disorders. But we hypothesized that these disorders would be milder if the damage is relatively limited to the cerebellum compared to damage involving the cerebellum plus additional cortical areas. We studied veterans with penetrating Traumatic Brain Injury (pTBI) participating in the Vietnam Head Injury Study (VHIS). We selected veterans with a cerebellar lesion ( = 24), a prefrontal cortex lesion ( = 20), along with healthy controls (HC) ( = 55). Tests of executive functions and emotions were analyzed as well as caregiver burden. We performed between-group null hypothesis significance testing, Bayesian hypothesis tests and correlational analyses. Performance of participants with cerebellar lesions which extended to the cerebral cortex was similar to the HC on the Executive Function tests but they were significantly impaired on the Working Memory Index. No differences were found on the emotional processing tasks with one exception-the Facial Expression of Emotion-Test (FEEST). We then examined a sub-group of participants with large cerebellar lesions (>15%) but minimal lesions in the cerebral cortex (<15%). This sub-group of participants performed similarly to the HC on the Working Memory Index and on the FEEST. We suggest that the cerebellar cortex may not be critical for executive functions or processing emotional stimuli in adults as suggested. Instead, we find that the cerebellum has a supportive role characterized by its computing of the motor requirements when EE processing is required.
我们研究了小脑在成人的执行和情感过程中是发挥关键作用还是支持作用。现在许多研究者支持这样的假设，即患有小脑损伤的参与者会出现执行功能和情感（EE）障碍。但我们假设，如果损伤相对局限于小脑，与涉及小脑及其他额外皮质区域的损伤相比，这些障碍会更轻。我们研究了参与越南头部损伤研究（VHIS）的穿透性创伤性脑损伤（pTBI）退伍军人。我们挑选了患有小脑损伤的退伍军人（n = 24）、前额叶皮质损伤的退伍军人（n = 20）以及健康对照组（HC）（n = 55）。对执行功能和情感测试以及照顾者负担进行了分析。我们进行了组间零假设显著性检验、贝叶斯假设检验和相关性分析。小脑损伤扩展至大脑皮质的参与者在执行功能测试中的表现与健康对照组相似，但在工作记忆指数上显著受损。在情感加工任务中，除了情感表达测试（FEEST）外，未发现差异。然后我们检查了一组小脑损伤较大（>15%）但大脑皮质损伤最小（<15%）的参与者亚组。该亚组参与者在工作记忆指数和FEEST上的表现与健康对照组相似。我们认为，小脑皮质可能并不像所认为的那样对成人的执行功能或处理情感刺激至关重要。相反，我们发现小脑具有支持作用，其特点是在需要进行EE加工时计算运动需求。
