Study finds cerebellum plays role in cognition — and it's different for males and females
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Research has shown there can be sex differences for how male and female brains are wired.
For example, links have been made between neurobehavioral diseases — such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which is more prevalent in men, and depression, which is more likely to affect women.
Arizona State University Assistant Professor Jessica Verpeut, from the Department of Psychology, has made a new discovery in this area, focusing on a part of the brain that hadn't been studied in this way before.
In the new study, she found that the cerebellum — which was thought to mainly control motor skills — plays a role in learning during adolescence, with differences seen in males and females.
Here, she explains her research and how it can be used to improve learning outcomes.
Editor's note: Answers have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Question: Throughout your career, you have focused your research on the brain. Why?
Answer: The brain is one of the last frontiers we have to solve in science. Early neuroscientists wondered about consciousness and how we comprehend the world around us. These questions are still not answered.
Unlike other organs, like our skin, our brain cannot regrow or regenerate, so how the brain develops is very important. During development there are periods of time where our experiences actually help to shape our brain. I am very interested in how that process happens and how over our lifetime these structures are maintained or adapt to our changing lives.
Q: What prompted the study of the cerebellum?
A: We wanted to understand if males and females learn tasks differently and if our brain region of interest, the cerebellum, could be altered to improve learning.
What I found in my previous research was that the cerebellum sends and receives brain signals from outside of the cerebellum, suggesting that it could play a larger role in non-motor behavior and impact flexibility behavior, sociability and anxiety. These studies only focused on males and specific cells in the cerebellar cortex. This study focused on both males and females.
Q: The study focused on adolescent males and females. Why?
A: During adolescence the brain is still changing and can do so quickly during this time due to small molecules that allow for faster adaptation.
Q: What were your findings?
A: We discovered that males and females do learn tasks in different ways and that the cerebellum can be altered to improve learning.
The study found that females completed more trials than males, were faster to initiate trials and respond to stimuli. These effects were increased when the cerebellum was stimulated in females, resulting in faster learning.
In 2023, my colleague Aleksandra Badura published similar findings in learning eye-blink conditioning, an automatic response that is controlled in the cerebellum. This study supports the idea that the cerebellum might have different activity in males and females.
Perhaps there are differences in attention or motivation, but the driving factor is most likely sex hormones. Estrogen can enhance plasticity so we will be following up on this study to find out.
Q: Why are these findings significant?
A: They are significant because we found that the cerebellum can be altered to improve learning and this seems to be happening in sex-specific ways through changes in small molecules that act to support brain cells.
It is possible that engaging in specific types of activities could activate brain adaptation and improve cognition in young individuals that are struggling with learning.
It is also possible that early behavior intervention can help kids with autism because it is allowing for increased brain adaptation. Altering structures (in the brain) could reopen learning periods and help with many different behaviors.
Q: So the data highlights the importance of studying sex-specific mechanisms to better understand why neurodevelopmental disorders present differently and cause varying symptoms in males and females?
A: Yes, absolutely! In general, females are understudied and autism is diagnosed at a higher rate in boys. The tests and typical behavior scales are built around typical boy behaviors and it can be very difficult to diagnose in girls, possibly leading to late diagnosis and less opportunities for early intervention.
We know little about how the brain adapts to learning stimuli between sexes and how they might change over the lifespan.
Q. Your study is a step toward greater understanding of the brain. What’s next?
A: These questions do not stop at development. How the brain ages and what happens to the cerebellum is not well understood. Menopause most likely impacts all these structures, in addition to changes in testosterone in men in aging. Disease, illness, diet and environment most likely impact them as well. This study is only the start of what we can learn about the brain.
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