Almost 50% of brain tumors in children involve the cerebellum (medulloblastomas, cerebellar astrocytomas, ependymomas; cf. Becker and Jay, 1990), a...

Almost 50% of brain tumors in children involve the cerebellum (medulloblastomas, cerebellar astrocytomas, ependymomas; cf. Becker and Jay, 1990), a structure localized in the posterior cranial fossa (PCF). In 10% of the children surgical removal of the tumor can cause a syndrome characterized by complete but transient loss of speech (transient cerebellar mutism), followed by dysarthria. This syndrome is frequent in patients aged 2-16 years. There have been reports of patients who became mute within 12 to 48 hours of surgery and the period of mutism lasted from 1.5 to 12 week after onset. Transient cerebellar mutism seems to be due to a diaschisis on the nervous structures of the brain stem which are responsible for verbal expression (cf. Pollak, 1997; Esposito et al., 1999). Recently, the cerebellum was also attributed an important role in the regulation of linguistic, cognitive and affective functions (cf. Fabbro, 2000b). Resection of cerebellar tumors both in childhood and adult age may cause a "Cognitive - Affective Syndrome" (Levisohn et al, 2000; Riva and Giorgi, 2000) characterized by expressive language deficits, verbal memory deficits (mainly after right hemisphere cerebellar lesions), deficits in the visuo-spatial functions (after left hemisphere cerebellar lesions) and deficits in affect regulation.