Cerebellar areas dedicated to social cognition? A comparison of meta-analytic and connectivity results

Abstract

A recent meta-analysis explored the role of the cerebellum in social cognition and documented that this part of the brain is critically implicated in social cognition, especially in more abstract and complex forms of mentalizing. The authors found an overlap with clusters involved in sensorimotor (during mirror and self-judgment tasks) as well as in executive processes (across all tasks) documented in earlier nonsocial cerebellar meta-analyses, and hence interpreted their results in terms of a domain-general function of the cerebellum. However, these meta-analytic results might be interpreted in a different, complementary way. Indeed, the results reveal a striking overlap with the parcellation of cerebellar topography offered by a recent functional connectivity analysis. In particular, the majority of social cognitive activity in the cerebellum can also be explained as located within the boundaries of a default/mentalizing network of the cerebellum, with the exception of the involvement of primary and integrative somatomotor networks for self-related and mirror tasks, respectively. Given the substantial overlap, a novel interpretation of the meta-analytic findings is put forward suggesting that cerebellar activity during social judgments might reflect a more domain-specific mentalizing functionality in some areas of the cerebellum than assumed before.

Keywords:

• Social cognition
• Cerebellum
• Functional neuroimaging
• Meta-analysis
• Functional connectivity

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a Strategic Research Program [SPR15] awarded by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium to Van Overwalle, Vandekerckhove and Mariën.