Psychiatry of the Cerebellum

Abstract

Since the pioneering early 19th-century studies of Luigi Rolando, the cerebellum has been recognized as a critical modulator of movement. Landmarks include the descriptions of hereditary disorders affecting the cerebellum by Friedreich in 1863 and Marie in 1893, and the pre-World War II work of Holmes, who established much of the terminology and many of the methods for assessing the motor functions of the cerebellum still in clinical use today. Every contemporary neurology text, and every neurology course for students, emphasizes the anatomy and physiology underlying the motor role of the cerebellum, and the motor signs and symptoms to be elicited in the clinical examination of cerebellar function. In contrast, the normal role of the cerebellum in cognition and emotion, and the potential impact of cerebellar damage on cognition and emotion, receives scant attention. In textbooks of neuropsychiatry, the cerebellum is hardly mentioned at all (Fig. 1).