Cerebellum development during childhood and adolescence: a longitudinal morphometric MRI study

By H. Tiemeier, Rhoshel K. Lenroot, Deanna K. Greenstein, Lan Tran, Ronald K. Pierson, Jay N. Giedd. NeuroImage, 2009

466 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In addition to its well established role in balance, coordination, and other motor skills, the cerebellum is increasingly recognized as a prominent contributor to a wide array of cognitive and emotional functions. Many of these capacities undergo dramatic changes during childhood and adolescence. However, accurate characterization of co-occurring anatomical changes has been hindered by lack of longitudinal data and methodologic challenges in quantifying subdivisions of the cerebellum. In this study we apply an innovative image analysis technique to quantify total cerebellar volume and 11 subdivisions (i.e. anterior, superior posterior, and inferior posterior lobes, corpus medullare, and three vermal regions) from anatomic brain MRI scans from 25 healthy females and 25 healthy males aged 5–24 years, each of whom was scanned at least three times at approximately two year intervals. Total cerebellum volume followed an inverted U shaped developmental trajectory peaking at age 11.8 years in females and 15.6 years in males. Cerebellar volume was 10% to 13% larger in males depending on the age of comparison and the sexual dimorphism remained significant after covarying for total brain volume. Subdivisions of the cerebellum had distinctive developmental trajectories with more phylogenetically recent regions maturing particularly late. The cerebellum's unique protracted developmental trajectories, sexual dimorphism, preferential vulnerability to environmental influences, and frequent implication in childhood onset disorders such as autism and ADHD make it a prime target for pediatric neuroimaging investigations.

Subfields: Neurology, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6d9c2c312ceb15a42ac0a67249a9c17530e310b2

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In Neurology

Citations in the corpus

Trajectories of brain aging in middle-aged and older adults: Regional and individual differences (2010, unknown): “While white matter volume increases steadily with maturation into the middle adulthood, the volume of the gray matter structures such as the caudate, the cerebellum, and the neocortex peak at early adolescence and steadies or declines thereafter (Lenroot and Giedd, 2006; Tiemeier et al., 2009).”
Age group and sex differences in performance on a computerized neurocognitive battery in children age 8–21 (2012, unknown): “This finding accords with physical (Hills & Byrne, 2010), behavioral (Greenstein, Blachstein, & Vakil, 2010; Keulers, Evers, Stiers, & Jollies, 2010; Review in Yurgelun-Todd, 2007), and neuroimaging (Bramen et al., 2010; Tiemeier et al., 2010) data indicating earlier maturation in females.”
Structural MRI of Pediatric Brain Development: What Have We Learned and Where Are We Going? (2010, unknown): “In contrast to the evolutionarily more recent cerebellar hemispheric lobes that followed the inverted U shaped developmental trajectory, cerebellar vermis size did not change across this age span (Tiemeier et al., 2010).”
Effects of Early Life Stress on Cognitive and Affective Function: An Integrated Review of Human Literature (2010, background): “2009) or learning and working memory (Tiemeier et al. 2010) associated with the cerebellum.”
Functional Topography of the Cerebellum in Verbal Working Memory (2010, background): “Accordingly, the cerebro-cerebellar motor loop matures earlier (by mid-teens) than does the cerebrocerebellar cognitive loop (by early 20s) (Gogtay et al. 2004; Tiemeier et al. 2010).”