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Continuous manipulation of mental representations is compromised in cerebellar degeneration

View ORCID ProfileSamuel D. McDougle, Jonathan Tsay, Benjamin Pitt, Maedbh King, William Saban, Jordan A. Taylor, Richard B. Ivry
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.08.032409
Samuel D. McDougle
1Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven CT 06511, USA
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  • ORCID record for Samuel D. McDougle
  • For correspondence: samuel.mcdougle@yale.edu xiaotsay2015@berkeley.edu
Jonathan Tsay
2Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94704, USA
3Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94704, USA
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  • For correspondence: samuel.mcdougle@yale.edu xiaotsay2015@berkeley.edu
Benjamin Pitt
2Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94704, USA
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Maedbh King
2Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94704, USA
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William Saban
2Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94704, USA
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Jordan A. Taylor
4Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton NJ 08540 USA
5Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton NJ 08540 USA
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Richard B. Ivry
2Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94704, USA
3Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94704, USA
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ABSTRACT

Here we test the hypothesis that the cerebellum aids in the dynamic transformation of mental representations. We report a series of neuropsychological experiments comparing the performance of individuals with cerebellar degeneration (CD) on cognitive tasks that either entail continuous, movement-like mental operations or more discrete mental operations. In visual cognition, individuals with CD exhibited an impaired rate of mental rotation, an operation hypothesized to require the continuous manipulation of a visual representation. In contrast, individuals with CD showed a normal processing rate when scanning items in visual working memory, an operation hypothesized to require the maintenance and retrieval of representations. In mathematical cognition, individuals with CD were impaired at single-digit addition, an operation hypothesized to require iterative manipulations along a mental number-line; this group was not impaired on arithmetic tasks requiring memory retrieval (e.g., single-digit multiplication). These results, obtained in tasks from two disparate domains, suggest one potential constraint on the contribution of the cerebellum to cognitive tasks. This constraint may parallel the cerebellum’s role in motor control, involving coordinated dynamic transformations in a mental workspace.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Additional analyses conducted.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted May 04, 2021.
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Continuous manipulation of mental representations is compromised in cerebellar degeneration
Samuel D. McDougle, Jonathan Tsay, Benjamin Pitt, Maedbh King, William Saban, Jordan A. Taylor, Richard B. Ivry
bioRxiv 2020.04.08.032409; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.08.032409
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Continuous manipulation of mental representations is compromised in cerebellar degeneration
Samuel D. McDougle, Jonathan Tsay, Benjamin Pitt, Maedbh King, William Saban, Jordan A. Taylor, Richard B. Ivry
bioRxiv 2020.04.08.032409; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.08.032409

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