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Cerebellar Connections with Limbic Circuits: Anatomy and Functional Implications

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Handbook of the Cerebellum and Cerebellar Disorders

Abstract

The affective component of the cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome provides empirical evidence for cerebellar participation in limbic-related functions including emotion and affect. The underlying connectivity of the cerebellar cortex and nuclei with limbic-related brain areas and with associative and paralimbic cortices suggests widespread cerebellar influence on behaviors including the experience and expression of emotion, sadness and grief, integrative hypothalamic visceral/sensory functions, pain perception, modulation, and intensity due to noxious stimuli, as well as other non-motor behaviors. The key anatomical relationships are the fastigial nucleus projections to the ventral tegmental area, cerebellar interconnections with the septum, hippocampus and amygdala, direct cerebellar connections with hypothalamic circuits that integrate somatic-, visceral-, and limbic-related activity, and indirect connections with the nucleus accumbens, a mesolimbic dopaminergic structure that predicts activity in a reward paradigm in limbic-related structures. Additionally, the cerebellum is interconnected with cingulate cortices that play a role in motivation and emotional drive, and with associative and paralimbic regions of prefrontal, posterior parietal, superior temporal polymodal, and parahippocampal regions heavily implicated in high order processing important for the integration of cognition and emotion. These connections between cerebral cortical and subcortical areas of the limbic system with the cerebellum (vermis and fastigial nucleus in particular) are the likely anatomical underpinning of the demonstrated cerebellar influence on limbic-related behaviors in the clinical setting and in earlier behavioral and physiological studies. These cerebellar connections with cerebral limbic areas are also implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism which demonstrate neuropathology and aberrant neurochemistry in the cerebellar cortex and nuclei. Defining the vermis and fastigial nuclei as the core cerebellar limbic regions has relevance for studies of cerebrocerebellar interconnections and functional coupling, and for therapeutic strategies that attempt to enhance cerebellar modulation of limbic-related structures to treat neuropsychiatric disorders.

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Acknowledgments

Supported in part by the National Ataxia Foundation, the MINDlink Foundation, and Mrs. Mary Jo Reston.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ataxia Center, Laboratory for Neuroanatomy and Cerebellar Neurobiology, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Jeremy D. Schmahmann

  2. Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Stark Neurosciences Research Institute, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA

    Adrian L. Oblak

  3. Program in Neuroscience, Hussman Institute for Autism, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Gene J. Blatt

Authors
  1. Jeremy D. Schmahmann
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  2. Adrian L. Oblak
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  3. Gene J. Blatt
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeremy D. Schmahmann .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CHU-Charleroi, University of Mons, Charleroi, Belgium

    Mario U. Manto

  2. Department of Neuroscience, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Donna L. Gruol

  3. Ataxia Center, Laboratory for Neuroanatomy and Cerebellar Neurobiology, Department of Neurology Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Jeremy D. Schmahmann

  4. Department of Integrative Physiology, Gunma University Graduate School of Medicine, Maebashi, Gunma, Japan

    Noriyuki Koibuchi

  5. Department of Pathology and Immunology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA

    Roy V. Sillitoe

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Jeremy D. Schmahmann

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Schmahmann, J.D., Oblak, A.L., Blatt, G.J. (2022). Cerebellar Connections with Limbic Circuits: Anatomy and Functional Implications. In: Manto, M.U., Gruol, D.L., Schmahmann, J.D., Koibuchi, N., Sillitoe, R.V. (eds) Handbook of the Cerebellum and Cerebellar Disorders. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23810-0_22

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