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A functional connectivity study between the cerebellum and frontotemporal language areas
Poster Session B, Friday, September 12, 4:30 - 6:00 pm, Field House
Marjolein Mues1, Avantika Mathur1, James Booth1; 1Vanderbilt University
Introduction: In a previous, preregistered fMRI study (accepted, preprint available: https://osf.io/preprints/osf/rvgs9_v1), we showed that phonological mechanisms are especially involved in morphological processing of sentences. Specifically, the posterior Superior Temporal Gyrus (pSTG) and Inferior Frontal Gyrus Opercularis (IFGop), two brain areas well recognized for their role in phonological processing, were activated during a grammaticality judgement task of sentences with a morphological error (i.e., every day she walk* the dog). Semantic areas were activated to a lesser extent: we observed a small but significant cluster in the IFG triangularis (IFGtri). Most surprisingly, exploratory whole brain correlations with language skill revealed a brain-behavior correlation in the cerebellum showing that greater activation was related to lower language abilities. While implicated in motor processing, the “linguistic cerebellum” has received increased interest in recent years (e.g., Casto et al., 2025; LeBel & D’Mello, 2023; Vias & Dick, 2017) The location of the correlation we identified was in the anterior lobe of the cerebellum, in lobules I-IV. This area has consistently been implicated in articulatory processes including somatosensory movement of the tongue (Prati et al., 2024) and phonemic and phonological processing (see for a literature overview LeBel & D’Mello, 2023). Moreover, this region has been relatively consistently implicated in developmental language disorder (Ullman et al, 2024). We hypothesized that the cerebellum may be used amplify and refine cortical phonological representations in children with lower language skills, allowing them to use a phonological mechanism to process morphemes (Booth et al., 2007). The current study: In this study, we will examine if the anterior lobe cerebellum is connected to known language areas in the fronto-temporal cortex during morphological processing by performing a task-based functional connectivity design. We will examine the pSTG and IFGop implicated in phonological processing and the posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) and IFGtri implicated in semantic processing. Our hypothesis is that the anterior lobe of the cerebellum is functionally connected to language areas related to phonological processing. We hypothesize that those with lower language skill will show higher functional connectivity between the anterior lobe and the cerebellum and pSTG/IFGop. To examine our hypotheses, functional connectivity between the seed region in the cerebellum to anatomical/functional masks of the dorsal versus ventral language areas will be extracted using gPPI in SPM. The seed region will be placed in the significant cluster in the anterior lobe of the cerebellum as identified in our previous analysis. We will use activation during the grammaticality task (sentences with a morphological violation > grammatical sentences) and run a general linear model (GLM). The following regressors will be entered into the GLM at the individual level analysis: the timeseries from the seed region in the cerebellum, the experimental parameter regressors for the grammaticality task, and six motion regressors for head movement. The task modulated connectivity within dorsal and ventral masks will be calculated for morphological processing. Lastly, we will examine a correlation between the task modulated connectivity in dorsal and ventral masks and language as measured by sentence repetition. Preliminary results will be discussed.
Topic Areas: Morphology, Language Development/Acquisition