Dr. David Berson

So you're getting... I'm getting punished.

Yeah, for setting it up so your signals don't conflict.

Yeah.

So, you know, the way I try to describe the cerebellum to my students is,

is that it serves sort of like the air traffic control system functions in air travel.

It's a system that's very complicated and it's really dependent on great information.

So it's taking in the information about everything that's happening everywhere, not only through your sensory systems, but it's listening into all the little centers elsewhere in your brain that are computing what you're going to be doing next and so forth.

And it really has an important role in coordinating and shaping movements.

But it's not that you would be paralyzed if your cerebellum was gone, because you still have motor neurons, you still have ways to talk to your muscles, you still have reflex centers, but you wouldn't be...

coordinating things so well anymore.

The timing between input and output might be off.

Or if you were trying to practice a new athletic move, like an overhead serve in tennis, you'd be just terrible at learning all the sequences of muscle movements and the feedback from your sensory apparatus that would let you really hit that ball exactly where you wanted to after the nth rep, right?

The thousandth rep or something, you get much better at it.

So the cerebellum is all involved in things like motor learning and refining the precisions of movement so that they get you where you want to go.

If you reach for a glass of champagne, that you don't knock it over or stop short.

Absolutely.

The typical thing would be...

a patient who has a cerebral stroke or a tumor, for example, might be not that steady on their feet.

If the dynamics of the situation, you're standing on a streetcar with no pole to hold onto, they might not be as good at adjusting all of the little movements of the car.

There's a kind of tremor that can occur as they're reaching for things.