The primate cortico-cerebellar system: anatomy and function

Key Points The cerebellum is traditionally regarded as a structure involved in motor control, but it is becoming increasingly clear that it also has an important role in processing higher level 'cognitive' information. This review first summarizes the anatomy of the cortico-cerebellar system, arguing that important clues about information processing can be derived from knowledge of its structural organization. The microstructure of the cerebellar cortex is uniform, suggesting that it processes its diverse inputs using a common set of computational principles. Control theory provides an excellent way to explain the involvement of the cerebellum in the control of movement. The anatomical organization of the cortico-cerebellar system suggests that these control theoretic accounts can be extended to explain how cerebellar circuits process information from the prefrontal cortex Recent evidence suggests that the primate cerebellum contributes not only to motor control, but also to higher cognitive function. Ramnani suggests that the uniform cellular organization of the cerebellum enables established models for motor information processing to be extended to information processing of a far more abstract nature. Evidence has been accumulating that the primate cerebellum contributes not only to motor control, but also to higher 'cognitive' function. However, there is no consensus about how the cerebellum processes such information. The answer to this puzzle can be found in the nature of cerebellar connections to areas of the cerebral cortex (particularly the prefrontal cortex) and in the uniformity of its intrinsic cellular organization, which implies uniformity in information processing regardless of the area of origin in the cerebral cortex. With this in mind, the relatively well-developed models of how the cerebellum processes information from the motor cortex might be extended to explain how it could also process information from the prefrontal cortex.