Affiliations: Department of Radiology, Stanford University,
Stanford, CA, USA | Neurosciences Program, Stanford University, Stanford,
CA, USA | Department of Neurology, Pediatrics, Neurosurgery and
Human Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA | Department of Psychiatry, Brown University, Providence
RI, USA | Department and Graduate Institute of Psychology,
National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan | Division of Psychology, Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore | Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore, MD, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: John E. Desmond, Department of Neurology,
Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Reed Hall East
- 2, 1620 McElderry Street, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. Tel.: +1 410 614 3040;
Fax: +1 410 502 2189; E-mail: dr.jdesmond@gmail.com
Abstract: This study was designed to investigate cerebellar lobular
contributions to specific cognitive deficits observed after cerebellar tumor
resection. Verbal working memory (VWM) tasks were administered to children
following surgical resection of cerebellar pilocytic astrocytomas and
age-matched controls. Anatomical MRI scans were used to quantify the extent of
cerebellar lobular damage from each patient's resection. Patients exhibited
significantly reduced digit span for auditory but not visual stimuli, relative
to controls, and damage to left hemispheral lobule VIII was significantly
correlated with this deficit. Patients also showed reduced effects of
articulatory suppression and this was correlated with damage to the vermis and
hemispheral lobule IV/V bilaterally. Phonological similarity and recency
effects did not differ overall between patients and controls, but outlier
patients with abnormal phonological similarity effects to either auditory or
visual stimuli were found to have damage to hemispheral lobule VIII/VIIB on the
left and right, respectively. We postulate that damage to left hemispheral
lobule VIII may interfere with encoding of auditory stimuli into the
phonological store. These data corroborate neuroimaging studies showing focal
cerebellar activation during VWM paradigms, and thereby allow us to predict
with greater accuracy which specific neurocognitive processes will be affected
by a cerebellar tumor resection.
Keywords: Cerebellum, working memory, brain tumor, magnetic resonance imaging
