title: Effects of cerebellar stimulation on processing semantic associations.
abstract: Current research in cerebellar cognitive and linguistic functions makes plausible the idea that the cerebellum is involved in processing temporally contiguous linguistic input. In order to assess this hypothesis, a lexical decision task was constructed to study the effects of cerebellar transcranial magnetic stimulation on semantic noun-to-verb priming based on association (e.g. 'soap-cleaning') or similarity (e.g. 'robbery-stealing'). The results demonstrated a selective increase in associative priming size after stimulation of a lateral cerebellar site. The findings are discussed in the contexts of a cerebellar role in linguistic expectancy generation and the corticocerebellar 'prefrontal' reciprocal loop.
authors: Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit, Linguistics and English Language, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD, UK. gargyropoulos@gmail.com
authors: Giorgos P
authors: GP
authors: Argyropoulos
authors: Neil G
authors: NG
authors: Muggleton
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D060865:Repetition Priming / Q000502:physiology*; D012660:Semantics; D050781:Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult