The parcellation organization of cerebellum associated with white-matter functional systems

The cerebellar role in various cognitive functions other than motor coordination has been gradually recognized, while its functional architecture and interaction with white matter functional networks (WM-FNs) remain unclear. The study combined resting-state functional connectivity and K-means clustering methods to obtain nine WM-FNs and seven gray matter functional networks (GM-FNs) by using the test-retest neuroimaging dataset collected from human connectome project. Subsequently, adopting winner-take-all algorithm and two distinct connectivity-based parcellations, we identified two parcellation maps of the cerebellum that corresponded to WM- and GM-FNs, respectively. We observed the cerebellar parcellations with unique spatial distribution pattern, which corresponds to white matter and gray matter functional systems. Additionally, the distinct WM-FNs exhibited high functional connectivity with GM-FNs, which corresponded to the overlapping maps between their cerebellar sub-regions well, indicating that intrinsic functional connectivity has an important constraint on the topological structure of cerebellum. Our finding created a new cerebellar parcellation atlas, advancing the mechanisms' understanding of interaction between cerebellar organization and functional systems.