Cerebellar contributions to verbal working memory

Tomlinson, Simon P. and Davis, Nick J. and Morgan, Helen M. and Bracewell, R. Martyn (2014) Cerebellar contributions to verbal working memory. The Cerebellum, 13 (3). pp. 354-361. ISSN 1473-4222

Abstract

There is increasing evidence for a cerebellar role in working memory. Clinical research has shown that working memory impairments after cerebellar damage and neuroimaging studies have revealed task-specific activation in the cerebellum during working memory processing. A lateralisation of cerebellar function within working memory has been proposed with the right hemisphere making the greater contribution to verbal processing and the left hemisphere for visuospatial tasks. We used continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) to examine whether differences in post-stimulation performance could be observed based on the cerebellar hemisphere stimulated and the type of data presented. We observed that participants were significantly less accurate on a verbal version of a Sternberg task after stimulation to the right cerebellar hemisphere when compared to left hemisphere stimulation. Performance on a visual Sternberg task was unaffected by stimulation of either hemisphere. We discuss our results in the context of prior studies that have used cerebellar stimulation to investigate working memory and highlight the cerebellar role in phonological encoding.