The role of the cerebellum in movement, thought, and emotion

• Autores: Xavier Güell Paradís
• Directores de la Tesis: Oscar Vilarroya Oliver (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2018
• Idioma: español
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Antonio Bulbena Vilarrasa (presid.), Guadalupe Soria Rodríguez (secret.), Mario Manto (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Psiquiatría por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
• Materias:
  • Ciencias médicas
    • Medicina interna
      • Neurología
    • Psiquiatría
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: TESEO
• Resumen

  • Evidence from multiple fields of study has established that the cerebellum is involved in motor, cognitive, and affective processes. Anatomical studies reveal cerebellar connections to motor and non-motor extracerebellar territories; cerebellar injury or degeneration results in a cerebellar motor syndrome but also in a cerebellar cognitive/affective syndrome; neuroimaging studies reveal cerebellar activation in motor and nonmotor processes; and many studies have reported cerebellar abnormalities in numerous neurological and psychiatric diseases that degrade cognition and affect.

    The compendium of studies that are included in this thesis present the following advances in our understanding of the role of the cerebellum in movement, thought, and emotion: (i) evidence supporting the presence of executive, linguistic, visual spatial, and affective impairments that characterize the Cerebellar Cognitive Affective syndrome, (ii) the description of similarities between linguistic and motor deficits in cerebellar dysfunction, which reinforces the notion of that a uniform computation underlies the cerebellar modulation of movement, thought, and emotion (Universal Cerebellar Transform theory), (iii) a review of the supporting evidence and relevance of the Universal Cerebellar Transform theory, (iv) confirmatory evidence of the presence and arrangement of functionally specialized motor and nonmotor regions of the cerebellum, which reaffirms the anatomical principles that underlie the notion of a Universal Cerebellar Transform, (v) the novel description of triple representation of non-motor task processing in the cerebellum, unmasking new clinical and basic science questions, and (vi) the discovery of a fundamental movement-to-thought principle of cerebellar macro-scale organization, which can serve as a guiding framework for future cerebellar research across neuroscience disciplines.