We explored classical conditioning in human subjects who had lesions in their cerebellar circuitry. Seven patients with damage to cerebellar structures and matched control subjects underwent simple delay tone-airpuff conditioning. Eyelid conditioned response (CR) acquisition was severely disrupted in the patient group, whereas autonomic CRs and slow cortical potentials developing between conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) were unaffected. Results are consistent with animal studies and earlier case reports indicating that intact cerebellar structures are necessary for the acquisition of classically conditioned motor responses.

The reliability and validity of a German version (MPI-D) of the West Haven-Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory (WHYMPI) was assessed in a sample of 185 chronic pain patients. MPI-D shows high internal consistency, valid subscales, and a factor structure that is comparable to the American version. The Interference scale of part 1 includes an additional item and one other item was excluded; the Life Control scale had one item added. In section 2, one item was dropped, and in section 3 only 3 instead of 4 activity scales were found. The questionnaire is sensitive to therapeutic change. The German scale means are lower for the scales indicating more disturbance or severity and higher for the scales indicating less disturbance. It is not clear whether this reduced pain impact is characteristic of German pain patients in general, or whether it is due to the less severely affected sample tested in this study.

No abstract

Recent neuropsychological studies have given rise to the hypothesis that the cerebellum is involved in nonmotor cognitive functions. The interpretation of these findings is, however, restricted by methodological problems, such as heterogenous patient samples. The present study compared patients with pathology confined to the cerebellum and patients with combined cerebellar and brainstem lesions to matched normal controls on a range of memory and learning tasks. Two procedural learning tasks were also conducted, involving perceptual (mirror reading) and conceptual skill acquisition (the Tower of Hanoi task). Patients with damage to both cerebellum and brainstem, but not patients with cerebellar pathology alone, showed impairments on memory and visuoconstructive tasks and evidence of frontal lobe dysfunction. Cerebellar damage had no effect on skill acquisition. These results do not support the hypothesis of cerebellar involvement in procedural learning per se.

No abstract