BACKGROUND: Previous studies have analyzed cerebral activation and lateralization of cognitive functions, as well as cerebellar function with reference to high-level cognitive processing. However,there has been very little research on systematization and diversification. In particular, there are no reports on cerebellar lateralization, although reliable results have been reported on cerebral lateralization.OBJECTIVE: This study analyzed cerebellar activation and lateralization in relation to verbal and visuospatial tasks using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).DESIGN, TIME AND SETTING: A block design for fMRI observation was performed at the fMRI Laboratory, Brain Science Research Center, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology from May 2006 to September 2008.PARTICIPANTS: Sixteen healthy, male, college students, aged (23.3 ± 0.5) years, and 16 healthy,male, college students, aged (21.5 ± 2.3) years, participated in the study, respectively. METHODS: Verbal and visuospatial tasks were presented while functional brain images were acquired using a 3T fMRI system. Verbal analogy testing required the subject to select the word with the same relationship as one of the given words. Verbal antonym testing required the subject to select the word with a different meaning among four words. Visuospatial tasks involved selecting a shape that corresponded to a given figure with four examples, as well as selecting a development figure of a diagram.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Changes in cerebellar activation and lateralization between two cognition tasks.RESULTS: Bilateral hemisphere lobules Ⅵ and Ⅸ, right hemisphere lobule Ⅷ, bilateral hemisphere lobules Crus I, and vermis lobule Ⅳ, Ⅴ, and Ⅵ were closely related to verbal tasks in comparison to visuospatial tasks. Conversely, bilateral hemisphere lobules IV and V, as well as the right hemisphere lobule Ⅵ, were closely related to visuospatial tasks compared to verbal tasks.There was no great difference between the number of activated voxels in the cerebellums during the tasks, and cerebellar lateralization was not observed.CONCLUSION: In the cerebellum, the activation region, but not lateralization, was different between verbal and visuospatial tasks.