Abstract:
Cerebellum is said to be crucial in controlling and maintaining the temporal aspects of any motor act. Temporal regulation by cerebellum may be as precise as a measure in milliseconds (Ivry, 1996). Boutsen & Christman (2002) speculated that the right cerebellar hemisphere is involved in the coordination of supralaryngeal and laryngeal movements as is required for voice onset time and in the maintenance of syllable integrity. They also speculated that left cerebellum is likely to be involved in controlling the tonal aspects of speech over a span of several syllables.Apart from the observations of Boutsen and Christman (2002), other studies have suggested a distinct acoustic-perceptual process for timing versus pitch characteristics (van Lancker & Sidtis, 1992) associated with the left and the right cortical hemisphere. The ‘Differential cue lateralisation’ hypothesis proposed by van Lancker & Sidtis (1992) contends that acoustic cues to prosody are lateralised to different cerebral hemispheres with fundamental frequency (F0) parameters processed by right cerebral hemisphere and temporal parameters by left cerebral hemisphere in speech production as well as speech perception. Considering the role subserved by the contralateral cerebro-cerebellar connection, the assigned functions of the cerebral hemispheres have a contralateral representation in the cerebellar hemispheres. In this context, Lechtenberg and Gilman (1978) suggest that, given the vast documentation of laterality effects on cerebral-cortical functions for speech, and the ample connections between cerebral and cerebellar hemispheres, laterality should be considered an important factor in cerebellar functions