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Cerebellar Theta-Burst Stimulation Selectively Enhances Lexical Associative Priming

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Abstract

Recent research in cerebellar cognitive and linguistic functions makes plausible the idea that the cerebellum is involved in processing temporally contiguous linguistic input. In order to assess this hypothesis, a simple lexical decision task was constructed to study whether the effect of transcranial magnetic stimulation on two different cerebellar sites would have a selective impact on associative as opposed to semantic priming. This is the first experiment applying transcranial magnetic stimulation of the cerebellum to a linguistic task. The results show a selective drop in lexical decision accuracy after stimulation of a medial cerebellar site in the first session of participation. Most importantly, they also demonstrate a selective increase of associative priming sizes after stimulation of the same site that cannot be attributed to changes in sensorimotor performance or in accuracy rates. The finding is discussed within the context of domain-general associative cerebellar computations.

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Notes

  1. As the reviewer correctly notes, a limitation in the design was that only unilateral (right) cerebellar stimulation was used, while laterality of limb responses (right-/left-hand index finger) was confounded with lexical decisions (“word”/“nonword” responses). The number of participants did not suffice to introduce further between-subjects variables to address these issues, and a more elaborate study with more experimental conditions would be required. As noted above, though, trials corresponding to “nonword” responses were all filler trials, and the primary focus of the study was on the speed and accuracy in different types of word–word trials. Furthermore, any motor-related disruptions induced by (right) cerebellar stimulation were expected to selectively affect performance in “word” responses, performed by the ipsilateral (right) index finger (see “Discussion” section).

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Acknowledgments

GPA would like to warmly thank Dr. Neil Muggleton for subject recruitment and technical support, Dr. Gorana Pobric for earlier pilot tests, Dr. Patrick Sturt, Prof. Jim Hurford, and Dr. Thomas Bak for helpful comments, the reviewer of the journal for their precious feedback, and the ‘Pavlos and Elissavet Papagiannopoulou Foundation’ for the financial support.

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There were no conflicts of interest.

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  1. Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit, Linguistics and English Language, School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD, UK

    Giorgos P. Argyropoulos

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Argyropoulos, G.P. Cerebellar Theta-Burst Stimulation Selectively Enhances Lexical Associative Priming. Cerebellum 10, 540–550 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12311-011-0269-y

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