Consensus Paper: Cerebellum and Emotion.

Over the past three decades, insights into the role of the cerebellum in emotional processing have substantially increased. Indeed, methodological refinements in cerebellar lesion studies and major technological advancements in the field of neuroscience are in particular responsible to an exponential growth of knowledge on the topic. It is timely to review the available data and to critically evaluate the current status of the role of the cerebellum in emotion and related domains. The main aim of this article is to present an overview of current facts and ongoing debates relating to clinical, neuroimaging, and neurophysiological findings on the role of the cerebellum in key aspects of emotion. Experts in the field of cerebellar research discuss the range of cerebellar contributions to emotion in nine topics. Topics include the role of the cerebellum in perception and recognition, forwarding and encoding of emotional information, and the experience and regulation of emotional states in relation to motor, cognitive, and social behaviors. In addition, perspectives including cerebellar involvement in emotional learning, pain, emotional aspects of speech, and neuropsychiatric aspects of the cerebellum in mood disorders are briefly discussed. Results of this consensus paper illustrate how theory and empirical research have converged to produce a composite picture of brain topography, physiology, and function that establishes the role of the cerebellum in many aspects of emotional processing.

Impairment of emotional facial expression and prosody discrimination due to ischemic cerebellar lesions.

A growing literature points to a specific role of the cerebellum in affect processing. However, understanding of affect processing disturbances following discrete cerebellar lesions is limited. We administered the Tübingen Affect Battery to assess recognition of emotional facial expression and emotional prosody in 15 patients with a cerebellar infarction and 10 age-matched controls. On emotional facial expression tasks, patients compared to controls showed impaired selection and matching of facial affect. On prosody tasks, patients showed marked impairments in naming affect and discriminating incongruencies. These deficits were more pronounced for negative affects. Our results confirm a significant role of the cerebellum in processing emotional recognition, a component of social cognition.

Event-related potentials indicating impaired emotional attention in cerebellar stroke--a case study.

The cerebellum has been implicated in affective and attentional processes, but little is known about corresponding neural signatures. We investigated early and late components of event-related potentials (ERPs) to emotionally arousing pictures, with and without competing attentional tasks, in a patient with an ischemic right posterior cerebellar infarction, at two months post infarct and two year follow-up. The early posterior negativity (EPN) response to highly arousing emotional cues in the competing visual attention condition revealed that the augmentation over occipital areas, as typically seen in normals, was absent post-infarct but was restored after two years. The late positive potentials (LPP) response to highly arousing emotional cues showed augmentation over frontal areas post-infarct, and over centro-parietal regions after two years. These ERP findings suggest a specific pattern of disruption of neural function associated with emotional-behavioral disturbances following cerebellar lesions, which can revert to normal with long term recovery.

Impact of cerebellar lesion on syntactic processing evidenced by event-related potentials.

In concern to the uncertain neural signature of the cerebellum in syntax processing, we investigated the Syntactic Positive Shift (SPS) for sentences with syntax violations in patients with cerebellar damage. In opposite to controls, patients showed no SPS around 300-650ms for syntax violations. Interestingly, Minimum-Norm analysis of SPS revealed increased activity in supramarginal and homologous Broca area for syntax violations in patients with cerebellar infarction. Overall, our findings support the still growing knowledge of the involvement of the cerebellum in cerebral networks in syntactic processing as evidenced by a sensitive ERP component.

[Mondini dysplasia: traumatic cerebrospinal fluid otorrhea with meningitis]. / Mondini-Dysplasie: Traumatische Otoliquorrhö mit Meningoenzephalitis.

Mondini dysplasia is a rare malformation of the inner ear commonly associated with loss of hearing and vestibular function. Children with Mondini dysplasia are predisposed to developing a spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak and recurrent meningitis. If there is no CSF leak but a unilateral hearing loss, the condition may go undiagnosed for years. We describe a 65-year-old man with unrecognized unilateral Mondini dysplasia who presented with CSF leak and meningoencephalitis after minor head trauma. Two operative interventions were undertaken to close the defect properly. Patients with Mondini dysplasia or their parents should be cautioned about the potential hazards of any head trauma.

[Neuropsychological dysfunction after cerebellar stroke]. / Neuropsychologische Defizite nach Kleinhirninfarkt.

Secondary to an ischemic cerebellar lesion in the territory of the right posterior inferior cerebellar artery (PICA), a 62-year-old man suffered relevant neuropsychological dysfunction. This included disturbances of executive functions, impaired visuospatial memory, blunting of affect, inappropriate behaviour, and linguistic difficulties. In this case report, we discuss the clinical presentation of so-called cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome.