Reading-selective areas in the cerebellum in adult readers

Previous research has identified cerebellar involvement in reading, but it remains unclear whether specific cerebellar regions are selectively engaged in lexical reading. To address this issue, the present study focused on the activation of the right cerebellar lobules VI, VII, and VIII across reading and non-reading tasks. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with Chinese adult readers, we conducted two experiments. Experiment 1 identified reading-selective areas by comparing activation during implicit lexical reading against pseudo-character/string and picture-viewing tasks. The results pinpointed the right cerebellar lobules VI and VIII as critically involved in reading, which showed significantly greater activation for real words than for pseudo-characters/strings and picture-viewing tasks. Lobule VII did not show significant task effect. Experiment 2 delineated the functional roles of these areas during orthographic, phonological, and semantic processing. Lobule VI exhibited high inter-participant consistency during phonological tasks. These findings highlight the functional heterogeneity of the cerebellum, demonstrating that one specific subregion (i.e. right lobules VI) is selectively engaged in lexical reading and phonological decoding.