The Cerebellum

Question 1

What is this important in?

Answer 1

Acquiring a motor skill

Question 2

What is this composed of?

Answer 2

2 areas
Flocculus
Two hemispheres

Question 3

What is the flocculus?

Answer 3

Small but dense lobe involved in eye movements and balance - inputs from vestibular system

Question 4

What does it contain?

Answer 4

About half the neurons in the entire nervous system

Question 5

What are the two hemispheres?

Answer 5

Homuncular organisation
Lateral parts: controls movement of limbs, hands, feet and digits
Medial parts: controls movement of face and midline of body

Question 6

What are the functions?

Answer 6

Main Motor Functions
1) Timing of movements - clock, pacemaker - tapping movements to a tone

2) Maintaining Movement Accuracy (Thatch, 2007)
Error Correction
Compares intended movement with actual movement and makes the necessary adjustments accordingly

3) Motor associative learning

Question 7

What is the problem with error correction?

Answer 7

Prison goggles: make you look in a weird way, gaze directed, throws darts
Normal: learn task
Damage to cerebellum: difficulty correcting for gaze direction

Question 8

Why do we need motor associative learning?

Answer 8

Eyeblink - if you get something in your eye
Conditioned eye blind response
air puff - eyeblink
repeat tone
development of conditioned eyeblink response to CS
Patients with cerebellar damage have trouble learning the response