Cb. Fortier et al., Cerebellar cortical degeneration disrupts discrimination learning but not delay or trace classical eyeblink conditioning, NEUROPSYCHL, 14(4), 2000, pp. 537-550
The authors investigated classical eyeblink conditioning ina relatively rar
e patient, B.R., with extensive cerebellar cortical atrophy and marked spar
ing of the dentate nucleus. Patient B.R.'s ability to acquire and extinguis
h simple associations (delay and trace conditioning tasks) as well as her a
bility to acquire more complex associations (temporal and simple discrimina
tion tasks) were examined. There are 2 primary findings from this study. Fi
rst, B.R. showed normal acquisition and extinction in delay and trace condi
tioning. Second, she demonstrated a complete inability to learn associative
discriminations, even in the case of a simple 2-tone discrimination within
the context of a delay paradigm. The latter finding was unexpected because
of the sparing of her deep cerebellar nuclei. These data suggest that the
cerebellar cortex, or pathways traversing cerebellar cortex, play an import
ant role in classical eyeblink discrimination learning.