Investigating the relationship between the cerebellum and cognition in both health and disease (360G-Wellcome-203770_Z_16_A)

The cerebellum is traditionally ascribed only a role in motor coordination. With it containing more neurones than the rest of the central nervous system combined and with connections with almost every other area of the brain concerned with cognition, this seems exceptionally unlikely. Indeed, studies utilising magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) increasingly show strong cerebellar activity associated with cognitive processes. This is still a greatly understudied area with only a few groups researching this. We, therefore, wish to investigate the role of the cerebellum in cognition using large imaging datasets, our own high-field imaging capabilities at Cardiff and various cerebellar-specific MRI processing tools which have not yet been applied to this question. This will allow us to see how well peoples’ cognitive performance in various domains correlates with cerebellar activity and structural differences. Additionally, recent evidence suggests cerebellar structural differences in schizophrenic patients. We wish, therefore, to also investigate if schizophrenia diagnosis and genetic risk for schizophrenia similarly alters cerebellar structure and, if so, at what time during development, if certain cognitive domains are particularly affected and if cerebellar metabolite levels differ in schizophrenic patients compared to non-schizophrenic controls.