Verbal Fluency and Agrammatism

Since the beginning of this century it has been documented that cerebellar lesions induce speech deficits but these were thought to result from lack of motor coordination in the muscular activity needed for phonation. The pure motor nature of the cerebellum has been challenged on different grounds, and cerebellar activation has been documented in language-related tasks independently from motor activity. This chapter reviews the available evidence in favor of a cerebellar contribution to linguistic processing, focusing mainly on clinical observations in patients. The clinical findings are discussed in the light of recent theories on cerebellar functions.