Functional Parcellation Between Bilingual Language Control and Cognitive Control in the Cerebellum

Previous research has implicated involvement of the cerebellum in high-level cognitive functions. The present study aimed to investigate the role of the cerebellum in bilingual language control and domain-general cognitive control. Chinese-English bilinguals were instructed to perform a language-switching task and a cognitive control task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. Using both univariate and multivariate analyses, we aimed to explore the functional overlaps and dissociations in the cerebellum between these two cognitive processes. The results demonstrated that the bilateral posterolateral cerebellum, including bilateral lobule VI and right Crus I, is engaged in both language control and cognitive control. In contrast, multivariate analyses identified distinct activation patterns in the right Crus I/II and right lobule VIII between the two tasks. For the first time, our study demonstrates that the cerebellum, analogous to the cerebral cortex, exhibits hierarchical processing in these two cognitive processes.