Navigating the cerebellum

Abstract

Decades of neuroimaging have shown that the human cerebellum is activated during a plethora of behaviours, including motor, social, language and cognitive tasks. Nonetheless, the cerebellum’s contribution to these different processes remains poorly understood. A major challenge in cerebellar neuroimaging is that the cerebellum consists of a mosaic of functional regions, which are specialized for distinct functional roles. It is still common to use the anatomical subdivision into different lobules to define regions of interest, even though lobular boundaries do not align with functional boundaries. Here, we present a novel functional atlas that integrates information from 7 large-scale datasets, outperforming existing atlases. The atlas allows for precision mapping in individuals: Integrating the probabilistic group atlas with an individual localizer scan results in a marked improvement in the prediction of individual boundaries. The atlas can be integrated with resting-state data, which, due to its accessibility in patient groups and developmental populations, makes it ideally suited for studying cerebellar development. I will discuss which types of fMRI data yield the highest precision and optimal localization methods.

Caroline Nettekoven

Postdoctoral Researcher

I am interested in the neural basis of complex behaviour. To study this, I use neuroimaging techniques, computational modelling of behaviour and brain stimulation.