Abstract
Social navigation involves observing individuals navigating a socially rich environment
sequentially while mentalizing their goals or preferences. The posterior cerebellum Crus area
is responsible for the understanding and learning of sequences of actions by others, which are
prerequisites for social understanding. This dissertation focuses on the posterior cerebellum’s
role in regulating human social behavior and guiding social navigation. Participants engaged
in a novel social navigation task where they memorized and replicated a protagonist’s path
through a grid toward a desired goal. A non-social control condition replaced the social
protagonist with non-social objects. After a general introduction (Chapter 1), the subsequent
five chapters (Chapters 2–6) present four fMRI experiments and one dynamical causal
modeling (DCM) study, exploring cerebello-cerebral pathways during social navigation
studies with 107 participants. Our findings confirm the posterior cerebellar Crus involvement
in (a) actively encoding versus passively observing navigational sequences and (b)
differentiating between social and non-social sequences. This is accomplished via closed-loop
pathways supporting cross-talk between navigation input from the cerebrum and identification
and verification of the navigational sequences. Additionally, when participants witnessed
behaviors contradicting social norms or expectations, the cerebellum exhibited increased
activity, accompanied by alterations in cerebello-cerebral pathways. These results underscore
the role of the posterior cerebellar Crus in supporting human goal-oriented social navigation,
contributing to our understanding of the cerebellum’s role in identifying navigational
sequences via neural pathways with the cerebrum, and its response to social violations during
social navigation. This is further discussed in Chapter 7.
sequentially while mentalizing their goals or preferences. The posterior cerebellum Crus area
is responsible for the understanding and learning of sequences of actions by others, which are
prerequisites for social understanding. This dissertation focuses on the posterior cerebellum’s
role in regulating human social behavior and guiding social navigation. Participants engaged
in a novel social navigation task where they memorized and replicated a protagonist’s path
through a grid toward a desired goal. A non-social control condition replaced the social
protagonist with non-social objects. After a general introduction (Chapter 1), the subsequent
five chapters (Chapters 2–6) present four fMRI experiments and one dynamical causal
modeling (DCM) study, exploring cerebello-cerebral pathways during social navigation
studies with 107 participants. Our findings confirm the posterior cerebellar Crus involvement
in (a) actively encoding versus passively observing navigational sequences and (b)
differentiating between social and non-social sequences. This is accomplished via closed-loop
pathways supporting cross-talk between navigation input from the cerebrum and identification
and verification of the navigational sequences. Additionally, when participants witnessed
behaviors contradicting social norms or expectations, the cerebellum exhibited increased
activity, accompanied by alterations in cerebello-cerebral pathways. These results underscore
the role of the posterior cerebellar Crus in supporting human goal-oriented social navigation,
contributing to our understanding of the cerebellum’s role in identifying navigational
sequences via neural pathways with the cerebrum, and its response to social violations during
social navigation. This is further discussed in Chapter 7.
| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisors/Advisors |
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| Award date | 30 Jan 2024 |
| Place of Publication | Brussels |
| Publisher | |
| Print ISBNs | 9789464948080 |
| Publication status | Published - 2024 |