The posterior cerebellum has a critical role in human social and emotional learning. Three systems and related neural networks support this cerebellar function: a biological action observation system as part of an extended sensorimotor integration network, a mentalizing system for understanding a person’s mental and emotional state subserved by a mentalizing network, and a limbic network supporting core emotional (dis)pleasure and arousal processes. In this Review, I describe how these systems and networks support social and emotional learning via functional reciprocal connections initiating and terminating in the posterior cerebellum and cerebral neocortex. It is hypothesized that a major function of the posterior cerebellum is to identify and encode temporal sequences of events, which might help to fine-tune and automatize social and emotional learning. I discuss research using neuroimaging and non-invasive stimulation that provides converging evidence for this hypothesized function of cerebellar sequencing, but also other potential functional accounts of the posterior cerebellum’s role in these social and emotional processes.

小脑后叶在人类的社交和情感学习中起着关键作用。三个系统和相关神经网络支持这种小脑功能：作为扩展感觉运动整合网络一部分的生物动作观察系统，由心理化网络服务的用于理解一个人心理和情绪状态的心理化系统，以及支持核心情绪（不）愉悦和唤醒过程的边缘网络。在这篇综述中，我描述了这些系统和网络如何通过启动和终止于小脑后叶和大脑新皮层的功能性互惠连接来支持社交和情感学习。据推测，小脑后叶的一个主要功能是识别和编码事件的时间序列，这可能有助于微调和自动化社交和情感学习。我讨论了使用神经影像学和非侵入性刺激的研究，这些研究为小脑测序的这种假设功能提供了聚合证据，但也讨论了小脑后叶在这些社会和情感过程中的作用的其他潜在功能解释。