Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on August 14, 2009
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhp157
Distinct and Overlapping Functional Zones in the Cerebellum Defined by Resting State Functional Connectivity
1 FMRIB Centre, Department of Clinical Neurology, University of Oxford, OX1 9DU Oxford, UK, 2 Division of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Imperial College, SW7 2AZ London, UK, 3 Department of Neurological Sciences, "La Sapienza" University, 00185 Rome, Italy, 4 Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, TW20 0EX London, UK
Address correspondence to Jill O'Reilly, BA, MSc, DPhil, FMRIB Centre, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headley Way, Headington, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK. Email: joreilly{at}fmrib.ox.ac.uk.
The cerebellum processes information from functionally diverse regions of the cerebral cortex. Cerebellar input and output nuclei have connections with prefrontal, parietal, and sensory cortex as well as motor and premotor cortex. However, the topography of the connections between the cerebellar and cerebral cortices remains largely unmapped, as it is relatively unamenable to anatomical methods. We used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to define subregions within the cerebellar cortex based on their functional connectivity with the cerebral cortex. We mapped resting-state functional connectivity voxel-wise across the cerebellar cortex, for cerebral–cortical masks covering prefrontal, motor, somatosensory, posterior parietal, visual, and auditory cortices. We found that the cerebellum can be divided into at least 2 zones: 1) a primary sensorimotor zone (Lobules V, VI, and VIII), which contains overlapping functional connectivity maps for domain-specific motor, somatosensory, visual, and auditory cortices; and 2) a supramodal zone (Lobules VIIa, Crus I, and II), which contains overlapping functional connectivity maps for prefrontal and posterior-parietal cortex. The cortical connectivity of the supramodal zone was driven by regions of frontal and parietal cortex which are not directly involved in sensory or motor processing, including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the frontal pole, and the inferior parietal lobule.
Key Words: cerebellum • fMRI • functional connectivity • networks • resting-state
Jill X. O'Reilly and Christian F. Beckmann contributed equally to the work.