The Cerebellum: a therapeutic target in treating speech and language disorders

Approaches to thinking about the cerebellum have historically been overshadowed by the view that it is a structure mainly involved in the regulation and coordination of motor control. During the past decades, neuroanatomical, neuroimaging and clinical studies have substantially modified this traditional view and provided new insights and a body of evidence for cerebellar involvement in a wide range of nonmotor processes, such as cognitive, affective and social processes. Within the broad range of functions in which the cerebellum is involved, several clinical studies have shown the occurrence of different types of speech and language impairments subsequent to cerebellar damage. In the first part of the present chapter, we briefly summarize the motor and nonmotor language impairments that have been reported after cerebellar damage in adults and the associated cerebello-cerebral network alterations. Starting from these clinical and neuroimaging data about the “linguistic cerebellum”, in the second part of the chapter, we provide an overview of the studies that used noninvasive transcranial neuromodulation techniques to further investigate the cerebellar role in speech and language domains. Furthermore, we show the current state of the art and translational potential of the use of cerebellar neuromodulation to improve speech and language functions after cortical and subcortical damage.