ReviewCerebellum (London, England)2012
From movement to thought: executive function, embodied cognition, and the cerebellum.
Review in Cerebellum (London, England), 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 130 papers, 9 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
130 citing papers in PubMed, 9 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Virtual Reality Interventions for Older Adults With Mild Cognitive Impairment: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Pooled it
- Associations Between Motor Competence and Executive Functions in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2024Pooled it
- The Influence of Motor Competence on Broader Aspects of Health: A Systematic Review of the Longitudinal Associations Between Motor Competence and Cognitive and Social-Emotional Outcomes.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2024Pooled it
- Brain connectivity changes underlying depression and fatigue in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: A systematic review.PloS one · 2024Pooled it
- Bibliometric and visualised analysis on non-invasive cerebellar stimulation from 1995 to 2021.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Pooled it
- Behavioral and Neuroimaging Research on Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD): A Combined Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Recent Findings.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- Cerebellar Contributions to Proactive and Reactive Control in the Stop Signal Task: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies.Neuropsychology review · 2020Pooled it
- Cerebellar Contribution to Motor and Non-motor Functions in Parkinson's Disease: A Meta-Analysis of fMRI Findings.Frontiers in neurology · 2020Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of Cognition in Chiari I Malformation.Neuropsychology review · 2018Pooled it
- Neural circuits for cognitive appetite control in healthy and obese individuals: an fMRI study.PloS one · 2015Trial
- Article
- Prenatal neural network organization and later executive function development.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Beyond a unitary Simon effect: dissociating stimulus- and response-driven spatial interference across finger and leg responses.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Neuroanatomical Cerebellar Patterns in Autism Spectrum Disorder.The Eurasian journal of medicine · 2026Article
- Transient cerebellum-related network disruption characterizes postoperative cognitive changes after dominant hemisphere subtemporal meningioma resection.Acta neurochirurgica · 2026Article
- Brain Functional Connectivity as a Mediator Between Hematological Metrics and Cognitive Decline in Children With Beta-thalassemia Major.Brain and behavior · 2026Article
- Targeting Cognitive Dysfunction in Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 2 Through Digital Cognitive Training.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2026Article
- Infant Motor Competence Predicts Executive Functions in Preschoolers: The Role of Sleep.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Altered System-Level Integration Between Working Memory and Gaze Dynamics in Children Treated for Posterior Fossa Tumors.Psychology in Russia : state of the art · 2026Article
- Rescuing gait under cognitive load: the benefits of Tai Chi for MCI.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Article
70 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This paper posits that the brain evolved for the control of action rather than for the development of cognition per se. We note that the terms commonly used to describe brain-behavior relationships define, and in many ways limit, how we conceptualize and investigate them and may therefore constrain the questions we ask and the utility of the "answers" we generate. Many constructs are so nonspecific and over-inclusive as to be scientifically meaningless. "Executive function" is one such term in common usage. As the construct is increasingly focal in neuroscience research, defining it clearly is critical. We propose a definition that places executive function within a model of continuous sensorimotor interaction with the environment. We posit that control of behavior is the essence of "executive function," and we explore the evolutionary advantage conferred by being able to anticipate and control behavior with both implicit and explicit mechanisms. We focus on the cerebellum's critical role in these control processes. We then hypothesize about the ways in which procedural (skill) learning contributes to the acquisition of declarative (semantic) knowledge. We hypothesize how these systems might interact in the process of grounding knowledge in sensorimotor anticipation, thereby directly linking movement to thought and "embodied cognition." We close with a discussion of ways in which the cerebellum instructs frontal systems how to think ahead by providing anticipatory control mechanisms, and we briefly review this model's potential applications.
Indexed as
Identifiers
22068584What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.