ABSTRACT
For over 200 years, the cerebellum has invariably been viewed by medical science as part of the motor control system of the human brain (Ghez & Fahn, 1991; Gilman, Bloedel, & Lechtenberg, 1981). For 50 years, infantile autism has been viewed as a disorder of the highest forms of human mental function (Kanner, 1943). Of all of the theories of infantile autism over the last 50 years, perhaps the oddest is the one that links the cerebellum and autism (Courchesne, 1985, 1987, 1989a, 1989b). First, it suggests that the human neocerebellum is involved in the voluntary coordination of selective, accurate, and rapid shifts of attention, a new role that is analogous to its long-established one in the coordination of smooth, accurate, and timely movements. Second, it suggests that in autism, early neocerebellar maldevelopment may interfere with the ability to shift attention in order to follow the rapidly changing events that compose reciprocal social interactions and many nonsocial situations. Much would be missed and the fragments caught would lack “context or temporal continuity.” The basis for this theory and recent evidence supporting it are the topics of this chapter.
