The cerebellar components of the human language network

The cerebellum’s capacity for neural computation is arguably unmatched. Yet despite evidence of cerebellar contributions to cognition, including language, its precise role remains debated. Here, we systematically evaluate cerebellar language-responsive regions using precision fMRI. We identify four cerebellar regions that respond to language across modalities (Experiments 1a-b, n=754). One region—spanning Crus I/II/lobule VIIb—is selective for language relative to diverse non-linguistic tasks (Experiments 2a-f, n=732), and the rest exhibit mixed-selective profiles. Like the neocortical language system, the language-selective region is engaged by sentence-level meanings during comprehension and production (Experiments 3a-c, n=105), but it is less sensitive than the neocortex to individual word meanings and grammatical structure. Finally, all four regions, but especially Crus I/II/VIIb, are functionally connected to the neocortical language system (Experiment 4, n=85). We propose that these cerebellar regions constitute components of the extended language network, with one region supporting semantic processing, and the other three plausibly integrating information from diverse neocortical regions.