Cerebellar induced differential polyglot aphasia: A neurolinguistic and fMRI study

Publication date: December 2017
Source:Brain and Language, Volume 175
Author(s): Peter Mariën, Kim van Dun, Johanna Van Dormael, Dorien Vandenborre, Stefanie Keulen, Mario Manto, Jo Verhoeven, Jubin Abutalebi
Research has shown that linguistic functions in the bilingual brain are subserved by similar neural circuits as in monolinguals, but with extra-activity associated with cognitive and attentional control. Although a role for the right cerebellum in multilingual language processing has recently been acknowledged, a potential role of the left cerebellum remains largely unexplored.This paper reports the clinical and fMRI findings in a strongly right-handed (late) multilingual patient who developed differential polyglot aphasia, ataxic dysarthria and a selective decrease in executive function due to an ischemic stroke in the left cerebellum. fMRI revealed that lexical-semantic retrieval in the unaffected L1 was predominantly associated with activations in the left cortical areas (left prefrontal area and left postcentral gyrus), while naming in two affected non-native languages recruited a significantly larger bilateral functional network, including the cerebellum. It is hypothesized that the left cerebellar insult resulted in decreased right prefrontal hemisphere functioning due to a loss of cerebellar impulses through the cerebello-cerebral pathways.



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