The limbic system is part of an intricate network which is involved in several functions like memory and emotion. Traditionally the role of the cerebellum was considered mainly associated to motion control; however several evidences are raising about a role of the cerebellum in learning skills, emotions control, mnemonic and behavioral processes involving also connections with limbic system. In...

The borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by a severe pattern of instability in emotional regulation, interpersonal relationships, identity and impulse control. These functions are related to the prefrontal cortex (PFC), and since PFC shows a rich anatomical connectivity with the cerebellum, the functionality of the cerebellar-PFC axis may impact on BPD. In this study, we inves...

The human cerebellum has recently been discovered to contribute to cognition and emotion beyond the planning and execution of movement, suggesting its functional heterogeneity. We aimed to identify the functional parcellation of the cerebellum using information from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). For this, we introduced a new data-driven decomposition-based funct...

Lesion or degeneration of the cerebellum can profoundly impair adaptive control of reaching in humans. Computational models have proposed that internal models that help control movements form in the cerebellum and influence planned motor output through the cerebello-thalamo-cortical pathway. However, lesion studies of the cerebellar thalamus have not consistently found impairment in reaching or...

Early investigations of cerebellar function focused on motor learning, in particular on eyeblink conditioning and adaptation of the vestibulo-ocular reflex, and led to the general view that cerebellar long-term depression (LTD) at parallel fiber (PF)-Purkinje cell (PC) synapses is the neural correlate of cerebellar motor learning. Thereafter, while the full complexity of cerebellar plasticities...

BACKGROUND Functional brain imaging studies in unipolar and secondary depression have generally found decreased prefrontal cortical activity, but in bipolar disorders findings have been more variable. METHODS Forty-three medication-free, treatment-resistant, predominantly rapid-cycling bipolar disorder patients and 43 age- and gender-matched healthy control subjects had cerebral glucose metab...

The fragile X syndrome is a mutation-driven developmental disorder caused by a repetition over 200 times of the CGG trinucleotide situated in the 5'-untranslated region of the fragile X mental retardation 1 gene (FMR1). The interval between 55 and 199 CGG repeats, which is over the normal range but below full mutation, is named fragile X premutation. Recent studies have focused on the asymptoma...