Brain Advance Access published online on April 6, 2004
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awh154
© 2004 by Guarantors of Brain
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Article
1 Brain and Behaviour Program, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
* Corresponding author. E-mail: maureen.dennis{at}sickkids.ca.
Received 18 September 2003
; revised 15 January 2004
; accepted 16 January 2004
The cerebellum is important for perceptual and motor timing in the mature brain, but the timing function of the cerebellum in the immature brain is less well understood. We investigated timing in children with spina bifida meningomyelocele (SB), a neural tube defect that involves cerebellar dysgenesis, and in age-matched controls. Specifically, we studied perceptual timing (judgements of 400 ms duration) and motor timing (isochronous motor tapping); measured cerebellar volumes; and related perceptual and motor timing to each other and to cerebellar volume measurements. Children with SB had impairments in the perception of duration (around 400 ms) but not frequency (around 3000 Hz), showing that their perceptual timing deficit was not a generalized auditory impairment. Children with SB had motor timing deficits on unpaced but not paced isochronous tapping, and their unpaced timing performance was associated with clock variance rather than with motor implementation. Perceptual and motor timing were correlated, suggesting that children with SB have impairments in a central timing mechanism. Children with SB, especially those with upper spinal cord lesions, had significant cerebellar volume reductions in grey and white matter, as well as different regional patterns of grey matter, white matter and CSF. Duration perception was correlated with cerebellar volumes, and the number of valid tapping trials was correlated with cerebellar volumes in the SB group, which data demonstrate structure-function relations between timing and cerebellar volumes.
Keywords: spina bifida; hydrocephalus; cerebellum; timing; MRI volumetrics
Neurobiology of perceptual and motor timing in children with spina bifida in relation to cerebellar volume
2 Brain and Behaviour Program, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
3 Community Health and Knowledge Transfer, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
4 Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
5 Center for Computational Biomedicine, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX, USA
6 Department of Radiology, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
7 Department of Radiology, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX, USA
8 Department of Surgery, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
9 Department of Pediatrics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX, USA
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