Rich Ivry: The Cerebellum’s Roles in Timing, Error Correction, and Cognition

Inconspicuously tucked under the cerebral cortex at the back of the brain the cerebellum was long believed to only function as a controller of smooth and accurate body movements. During the past 40 years professor Rich Ivry at the University of California Berkeley has made major contributions to research that has revealed a much more complex repertoire of functions of the human cerebellum including roles in cognition, perception, and language. It turns out that there are at least as many neurons in the cerebellum as there are in the entire rest of the brain and that the cerebellum has strong connections to regions of the cerebral cortex involved in learning and memory and decision-making. In this episode professor Ivry talks about how different experimental approaches and modern technologies have been used to elucidate the functional organization of cerebellar circuits and the consequences of cerebellar dysfunction.

LINKS:

The Ivry Laboratory at Berkeley: http://ivrylab.berkeley.edu/rich-ivry.html

Review articles:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8514106/pdf/nihms-1679908.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6686189/pdf/nihms-1530513.pdf

Examples of studies of patients with damage to the cerebellum:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10200308/pdf/awac072.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8245126/pdf/elife-66743.pdf