Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Löwgren, Karolina
• Bååth, Rasmus
• Rasmussen, Anders

Titel

Weak correlations between cerebellar tests

Ist Teil von

• Scientific reports, 2020-06, Vol.10 (1), p.9003-9003, Article 9003

Ort / Verlag

England: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Eyeblink conditioning, finger tapping, and prism adaptation are three tasks that have been linked to the cerebellum. Previous research suggests that these tasks recruit distinct but partially overlapping parts of the cerebellum, as well as different extra-cerebellar networks. However, the relationships between the performances on these tasks remain unclear. Here we tested eyeblink conditioning, finger tapping, and prism adaptation in 42 children and 44 adults and estimated the degree of correlation between the performance measures. The results show that performance on all three tasks improves with age in typically developing school-aged children. However, the correlations between the performance measures of the different tasks were consistently weak and without any consistent directions. This reinforces the view that eyeblink conditioning, finger tapping, and prism adaptation rely on distinct mechanisms. Consequently, performance on these tasks cannot be used separately to assess a common cerebellar function or to make general conclusions about cerebellar dysfunction. However, together, these three behavioral tasks have the potential to contribute to a nuanced picture of human cerebellar functions during development.