Inferior olive mirrors joint dynamics to implement an inverse controller

To produce smooth and coordinated motion, our nervous systems need to generate precisely timed muscle activation patterns that, due to axonal conduction delay, must be generated in a predictive and feedforward manner. Kawato proposed that the cerebellum accomplishes this by acting as an inverse controller that modulates descending motor commands to predictively drive the spinal cord such that the musculoskeletal dynamics are canceled out. This and other cerebellar theories do not, however, account for the rich biophysical properties expressed by the olivocerebellar complex’s various cell types, making these theories difficult to verify experimentally. Here we propose that a multizonal microcomplex’s (MZMC) inferior olivary neurons use their subthreshold oscillations to mirror a musculoskeletal joint’s underdamped dynamics, thereby achieving inverse control. We used control theory to map a joint’s inverse model onto an MZMC’s biophysics, and we used biophysical modeling to confirm that inferior olivary neurons can express the dynamics required to mirror biomechanical joints. We then combined both techniques to predict how experimentally injecting current into the inferior olive would affect overall motor output performance. We found that this experimental manipulation unmasked a joint’s natural dynamics, as observed by motor output ringing at the joint’s natural frequency, with amplitude proportional to the amount of current. These results support the proposal that the cerebellum—in particular an MZMC—is an inverse controller; the results also provide a biophysical implementation for this controller and allow one to make an experimentally testable prediction.