Cerebellar perturbation impairs human working memory and degrades spatial tuning throughout cortex

Working memory, the transient maintenance and manipulation of information, is fundamental to human cognition. While working memory is typically thought to rely on frontoparietal cortex, recent neuroimaging evidence suggests the involvement of the cerebellum in a host of cognitive functions, including memory. It is currently unknown whether cerebellar processing is necessary for the persistent maintenance of visual input or if cerebellar signatures of working memory are simply a downstream reflection of cortical activity. Using a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in humans, we show that cerebellar perturbation broadly degrades cortical spatial tuning and impairs spatial working memory recall. This impairment matches that observed following perturbation of canonical frontoparietal working memory areas. These findings establish a causal role for the cerebellum in the persistent maintenance of cognitive representations, necessitating a revision of prevailing accounts of human working memory.