Regional functionality of the cerebellum

Abstract

Over the recent years, advances in brain imaging, optogenetics and viral tracing have greatly advanced our understanding of the cerebellum and its connectivity. It has become clear that the cerebellum can be divided into functional units, each connected with particular brain areas involved in specific tasks, allowing afferent and efferent pathways to process task-specific information. The activity patterns in these pathways can be widely different among cerebellar areas. Therefore, it is expected that each cerebellar module is tailored to interpret inputs with a specific activity profile. In this paper we will review the evidence for region-specific inputs, region-specific connectivity with the rest of the brain, and region-specific processing within the cerebellum.