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What does the cerebellum do?

sarahconstantin.substack.com

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Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#181

Post by eurekin »

Sharlin wrote: post #161
eurekin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of our motor learning is in fact wiring the cerebellum correctly. That got me interested: since the wiring is so long (from limbs to cerebellum), what kinds of motor learning? Do we know, if cerebellum needs more energy than the rest of the brain?

What do you mean? The cerebellum is closer to the spinal cord than the rest of the brains. And there's no learning happening anywhere but the brain, vertebrates don't have distributed central nervous system like octopuses do. The only thing vertebrate limbs can do on their own are certain hardcoded reflex actions.

So the spinal cord is only a wire and, besides reflexes, there is no processing done anywhere else, but the brain?

How about neurons in the gut, I've read somewhere that intestines are lined up with some neural "mesh". Is that only for signal transmission?

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#182

Post by RugnirViking »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #25
retrac wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been argued that most, maybe all, of human cognition is based on a sort of folk-physics mental model with objects. We throw ideas into the ring to be chewed on and distilled and maybe brought in to practice or thrown out as useless. The linguistic metaphors we use, at least, to talk about ideas and abstractions, are never more than one, maybe two, steps away from a hand moving or rearranging something.

In fact the Glasgow coma scale (1), which gives you levels of human consciousness, is precicely that. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513298/

I'm confused at what exactly the link is here but I'm curious. Could you elaborate?

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#183

Post by riversflow »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #180
trealira wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animals like newborn deer fawns are born knowing how to walk, follow their mothers around, and run away from danger, although their legs are weak at first. So this makes me wonder if having to learn object permanence is just one more example of human babies being underdeveloped compared to those of other species of animals.

Alternatively, God made human babies superior in design from birth by giving them increased adaptability. The extra flexibility might require the specific movements to be trained, puts them behind on any specific goal at the start, and over time makes them exceed the innate capabilities of other species over time. By exceed, they might have a higher variety of behaviors or do them better (esp with tech). In A.I., we…

> God made human babies superior in design from birth by giving them increased adaptability.

Holy assumptions batman. Homo sapiens aren't "superior", that's a terrible starting place for a hypothesis. There are plenty of metrics a human will never beat other species. Reaction time is a great starting place.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#184

Post by heyoni »

codeflo wrote: post #145
akavi wrote: post #81

This is fascinating to me. The list of things the author suggests the cerebellum handles is a tailor-made list of things I'm oddly bad at: 1. I'm very uncoordinated, with a noticeable intentional tremor 2. I'm particularly bad at sequencing dependencies for projects/errands/household tasks. I have to write down even fairly simple sequences of subtasks or get lost in yak-shaving loops 3. When flustered, I make very di…

I thought that the list of cognitive impairments sounds like a laundry list of ASD symptoms, and indeed, at least some researchers seem to believe that there's a connection between Autism and cerebellum dysfunction: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3677555/

There are also a number of rare diseases whose mutations affect cortical neurons and have some overlap in their symptoms with ASD.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#185

Post by AndrewKemendo »

RugnirViking wrote: post #182
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact the Glasgow coma scale (1), which gives you levels of human consciousness, is precicely that. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513298/

I'm confused at what exactly the link is here but I'm curious. Could you elaborate?

I was responding to this comment:

“The linguistic metaphors we use, at least, to talk about ideas and abstractions, are never more than one, maybe two, steps away from a hand moving or rearranging something”

And the Glasgow scale is exactly that, how people physically respond to stimulus with a body movement, and subsequent complex body movements - eg just humans vaguely deciding - is how we treat for levels of consciousness.

It’s not scientific at all is the point and is very “folk-physics mental model with objects” to the OPs original assertion

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#186

Post by MollyRealized »

akavi wrote: post #81

This is fascinating to me. The list of things the author suggests the cerebellum handles is a tailor-made list of things I'm oddly bad at: 1. I'm very uncoordinated, with a noticeable intentional tremor 2. I'm particularly bad at sequencing dependencies for projects/errands/household tasks. I have to write down even fairly simple sequences of subtasks or get lost in yak-shaving loops 3. When flustered, I make very di…

With regards to #2, I'm wondering if anyone has directed you to https://goblin.tools/ ?

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#187

Post by ThinkingAgain »

“It’s a big job, but it’s not easy.” - Is this a problem? The way I understand this sentence is that: "It is a big job, and you might be excited about it, but it is not easy".

When talking to someone with whom we have a good rapport and good context, this conversation can be done faster. Basically, I/O is slower than the CPU.

Some of the other sentences can also be explained in similar manner.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#188

Post by NalNezumi »

aetherson wrote: post #9

My overall read on this article is that its claims are probably overconfident. Like, it seems interesting, but like she's seeing a few results and making big claims about how the cerebellum plays into overall cognition, and my general sense is that lots of humility is usually warranted here: that simple and decisive statements usually turn out to be riddled with provisos and unexplained behavior.

After sharing this piece to a neuroscientist coworker, I got the same feedback. Interesting article, but should probably be taken with a grain of salt when the author interpolate from studies.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#189

Post by huytersd »

weinzierl wrote: post #97
akavi wrote: post #81

This is fascinating to me. The list of things the author suggests the cerebellum handles is a tailor-made list of things I'm oddly bad at: 1. I'm very uncoordinated, with a noticeable intentional tremor 2. I'm particularly bad at sequencing dependencies for projects/errands/household tasks. I have to write down even fairly simple sequences of subtasks or get lost in yak-shaving loops 3. When flustered, I make very di…

I can't help thinking that this is where humanity is heading. Given that the different parts of the brain have to compete for resources and given what the cerebellum does, it makes sense that a lesser developed one can be an advantage: It frees up resources for parts of the brain that are more important in our times.

What resources does it have to compete for? We basically have unlimited protein and carbs at this point.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#190

Post by pests »

riversflow wrote: post #183
nickpsecurity wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, God made human babies superior in design from birth by giving them increased adaptability. The extra flexibility might require the specific movements to be trained, puts them behind on any specific goal at the start, and over time makes them exceed the innate capabilities of other species over time. By exceed, they might have a higher variety of behaviors or do them better (esp with tech). In A.I., we…

> God made human babies superior in design from birth by giving them increased adaptability. Holy assumptions batman. Homo sapiens aren't "superior", that's a terrible starting place for a hypothesis. There are plenty of metrics a human will never beat other species. Reaction time is a great starting place.

Sure, but which species is sitting here having a conversation about it?
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