The cerebellar role in attention

Background: Clinical and functional neuroimaging studies showed a cerebellar involvement in different attention tasks. Nevertheless, most studies have focused on single aspects of attention and it is still lacking a consensus regarding the overall cerebellar contribution to this function. Methods: A computerized battery (“Test-Battery of Attentional Performance”, TAP) was administered to cerebellar patients and healthy subjects well-matched for age and education, to analyze various components of attention. A one-way ancova was used to evaluate eventual differences between patients’ and controls’ performances. Simple tapping reaction time was used as covariate to exclude the influence of the motor component on the cognitive performance. Results: Cerebellar patients were significantly impaired in divided attention, flexibility and sustained attention tasks, while there were no differences between patients and control groups in go-nogo, working memory, spatial attention and ocular moveme

Background: Clinical and functional neuroimaging studies showed a cerebellar involvement in different attention tasks. Nevertheless, most studies have focused on single aspects of attention and it is still lacking a consensus regarding the overall cerebellar contribution to this function. Methods: A computerized battery (“Test-Battery of Attentional Performance”, TAP) was administered to cerebellar patients and healthy subjects well-matched for age and education, to analyze various components of attention. A one-way ancova was used to evaluate eventual differences between patients’ and controls’ performances. Simple tapping reaction time was used as covariate to exclude the influence of the motor component on the cognitive performance. Results: Cerebellar patients were significantly impaired in divided attention, flexibility and sustained attention tasks, while there were no differences between patients and control groups in go-nogo, working memory, spatial attention and ocular movements tasks. These results demonstrate that cerebellar damage produces deficits in attentional domain that may be the consequence of the existence of discrete parallel circuits that connect specific cerebellar portions with specific areas of the cerebral cortex.