Neuroscience

Functional connectivity

Elementary cognitive task

Cognition

Cognitive psychology

Management

Psychology

Economics

Set (abstract data type)

Functional imaging

Programming language

Functional magnetic resonance imaging

Cerebellum

Computer science

Task (project management)

Functional neuroimaging

Neuroimaging

Nature Neuroscience

There is compelling evidence that the human cerebellum is engaged in a wide array of motor and cognitive tasks. A fundamental question centers on whether the cerebellum is organized into distinct functional subregions. To address this question, we employed a rich task battery designed to tap into a broad range of cognitive processes. During four functional MRI sessions, participants performed a battery of 26 diverse tasks comprising 47 unique conditions. Using the data from this multi-domain task battery, we derived a comprehensive functional parcellation of the cerebellar cortex and evaluated it by predicting functional boundaries in a novel set of tasks. The new parcellation successfully identified distinct functional subregions, providing significant improvements over existing parcellations derived from task-free data. Lobular boundaries, commonly used to summarize functional data, did not coincide with functional subdivisions. The new parcellation provides a functional atlas to guide future neuroimaging studies. Using a large task battery spanning motor, cognitive, social and affective domains, this functional MRI (fMRI) study provides a comprehensive functional map of the human cerebellum, along with a comparison to maps derived from anatomy and resting-state fMRI data.

Functional boundaries in the human cerebellum revealed by a multi-domain task battery