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Role of the cerebellum in movements: control of timing or movement transitions?

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Abstract

Patients with cerebellar damage are impaired on a range of timed tasks. However, recent research has indicated that the impairment on temporal production tasks is limited to discontinuous movements. The present experiments were designed to compare two accounts for the increased temporal variability observed in these patients when producing discontinuous movements. First, the impairment on discontinuous movements may be the result of the requirements associated with transitioning between movement onsets and offsets, requirements unique to discontinuous movement production. Second, the impairment may reflect a requirement to represent the temporal goal in timed, discontinuous movements. Patients with unilateral or bilateral cerebellar lesions and matched control subjects performed a key-pressing task. In one condition, the participants pressed and immediately released the key. The other conditions required the participants to press the key, and after either a 550-ms or 950-ms delay, release the key. Individuals with cerebellar damage were impaired on the two timed conditions. These results do not support the transition hypothesis. Rather, they are consistent with the hypothesis that the cerebellum is essential for tasks requiring precise event-like temporal control.

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Notes

  1. We used all three movement types in the regression analyses. However, we have assumed that the press condition does not entail an explicit timed component: the duration of these movements reflects the minimum time that the key is pressed during the transition from press to lift. Given this, one could argue that the press condition does not contain a duration-dependent source of variability and the slope analysis should be restricted to just the short and long conditions. We also calculated slope and intercept values using just these two points. The statistical outcomes were unchanged in this more restricted analysis. However, we report the regression based on all three conditions since it does not require an assumption regarding whether or not the press movement type involves “timing.”

  2. The effect size for the short and long conditions was used to estimate the power for identifying differences in the press condition given our group sizes. Power was low in experiment 1 (12% chance that we would detect significant difference between means in the press condition). This value increased to 62% in experiment 2.

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Acknowledgements

This research was support by grants NIH P01 and NS40813.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley, 3210 Tolman Hall, #1650, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

    Rebecca M. C. Spencer & Richard B. Ivry

  2. Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

    Rebecca M. C. Spencer & Richard B. Ivry

  3. Department of Health and Kinesiology and Purdue University Integrative Program in Neuroscience, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA

    Howard N. Zelaznik

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  1. Rebecca M. C. Spencer
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  2. Richard B. Ivry
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  3. Howard N. Zelaznik
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Correspondence to Rebecca M. C. Spencer.

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Spencer, R.M.C., Ivry, R.B. & Zelaznik, H.N. Role of the cerebellum in movements: control of timing or movement transitions?. Exp Brain Res 161, 383–396 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-004-2088-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-004-2088-6

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