Introducing the brain: cerebellar role in memory (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, October 09, 2022, 16:59 (774 days ago) @ David Turell

In particularly emotional memories:

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-cerebellum-has-a-function-we-didnt-even-know-about-new...

"Already known as being important for properly controlling our movements, it now appears that this brain region also has a key role to play when it comes to remembering positive and negative emotional experiences.

"These types of emotional experiences are particularly well remembered by the brain, not least because it helps the survival of our species to be able to remember times when we were in danger and times when we prospered.

"The amygdala and hippocampus are the brain regions thought to be most responsible for consolidating these emotional memories, but as the cerebellum is already linked to fear conditioning, the researchers behind the latest study wanted to see if it had a part to play in logging emotional memories too.

"'The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the cerebellum and cerebellar–cerebral connections are involved in the phenomenon of superior episodic memory for emotionally arousing visual information," write the researchers in their published paper.

***

"The participants in the study remembered positive and negative images much better than the neutral ones, and this enhanced storage capability was linked to times when the cerebellum was more active.

"What's more, the researchers also observed a greater level of communication between the cerebellum and the cerebrum, the largest part of the brain. The cerebellum was receiving information from the anterior cingulate cortex (a region key to perceiving and evaluating feelings); it was also relaying information to the amygdala and the hippocampus.

"'These results indicate that the cerebellum is an integral component of a network that is responsible for the improved storage of emotional information," says neuroscientist Dominique de Quervain from the University of Basel in Switzerland."

Comment: another new finding about the cerebellum showing its function is much more complex than coordinating movement.