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. 2023 May 15;14(1):18.
doi: 10.1186/s13229-023-00551-8.

Understanding the relationship between cerebellar structure and social abilities

Yannis Elandaloussi  1   2   3   4 , Dorothea L Floris  5   6   7 , Pierrick Coupé  8 , Edouard Duchesnay  4 , Angeline Mihailov  4 , Antoine Grigis  4 , Indrit Bègue  9   10   11 , Julie Victor  4 , Vincent Frouin  4 , Marion Leboyer  2   3   12 , Josselin Houenou  2   3   4   12 , Charles Laidi  13   14   15   16   17
Affiliations

Understanding the relationship between cerebellar structure and social abilities

Yannis Elandaloussi et al. Mol Autism. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Background: The cerebellum contains more than 50% of all neurons in the brain and is involved in a broad range of cognitive functions, including social communication and social cognition. Inconsistent atypicalities in the cerebellum have been reported in individuals with autism compared to controls suggesting the limits of categorical case control comparisons. Alternatively, investigating how clinical dimensions are related to neuroanatomical features, in line with the Research Domain Criteria approach, might be more relevant. We hypothesized that the volume of the "cognitive" lobules of the cerebellum would be associated with social difficulties.

Methods: We analyzed structural MRI data from a large pediatric and transdiagnostic sample (Healthy Brain Network). We performed cerebellar parcellation with a well-validated automated segmentation pipeline (CERES). We studied how social communication abilities-assessed with the social component of the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS)-were associated with the cerebellar structure, using linear mixed models and canonical correlation analysis.

Results: In 850 children and teenagers (mean age 10.8 ± 3 years; range 5-18 years), we found a significant association between the cerebellum, IQ and social communication performance in our canonical correlation model.

Limitations: Cerebellar parcellation relies on anatomical boundaries, which does not overlap with functional anatomy. The SRS was originally designed to identify social impairments associated with autism spectrum disorders.

Conclusion: Our results unravel a complex relationship between cerebellar structure, social performance and IQ and provide support for the involvement of the cerebellum in social and cognitive processes.

Keywords: Autism; Cerebellum; MRI; Parcellation; Social communication; Volumetry.

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Conflict of interest statement

Dorothea L. Floris, second author of the manuscript, is an associate editor of Molecular Autism. The other authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flowchart diagram. IQ, intelligence quotient; CT, cerebellar tissue. *First quality check procedure: visual inspection of 3 raw T1 slices for each subject. **Second quality check procedure: visual inspection of cerebellar segmentation of T1 images masked with the parcellation outcome for each subject. Examples of excluded subjects are detailed in Additional file 1: Fig. S1
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Cerebellar segmentation with CERES and ROI map. A Mask of a CERES segmentation output on the native T1 weighted scan. B Cerebellar map of lobules and ROI used in linear models. Anterior lobe includes lobules I to V, postero-inferior lobe includes lobules IX and X. Vermis is not segmented by CERES atlas and therefore not colored on the figure
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
CCA results and significance threshold. A Canonical correlation plot between cerebellar domain and clinical domain. B Cerebellar map showing correlation coefficients between each lobule and canonical clinical variate. C Distribution of canonical correlation coefficients between clinical and neuroanatomical domains when performing shuffle (10,000 permutations) and significance threshold for an alpha level of 0.05. Our model was significant at p < 0.0001 threshold (r = 0.36). D Correlation coefficients between each clinical variable and canonical neuroanatomical variate. CCA, Canonical Correlation Analysis; SRS, Social Responsiveness Scale total score; FSIQ, Full-Scale Intelligence Quotient; AWR, SRS Social Awareness subscale; COG, SRS Social Cognition subscale; MOT, SRS Social Motivation subscale; and COM, SRS Social Communication subscale
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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