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What does the cerebellum do?

sarahconstantin.substack.com

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Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#71

Post by Spooky23 »

echelon wrote: post #49
armada651 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What signals cause rewiring of the cerebellum? Any signal, that's the point. The cerebellum learns the patterns of signals involved in motor control. This is why you train your skills by doing the correct movement over and over again. Once the cerebellum has adjusted to the correct motor signal patterns the correct movement will become effortless.

> This is why you train your skills by doing the correct movement over and over again. Yes, but can you make this to go faster ?

Train harder. Develop habits.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#72

Post by chaxor »

rzzzt wrote: post #13
NKosmatos wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are spot on examples on what the cerebellum does. If I may, a third example/analogy that comes to mind is cache memory or L2ARC drives, at least that’s how I have it stored in my mind (pun intended) :-)

"The brain is like a computer that"-style analogies are rarely fitting, or so vague as to being almost useless. My fridge is an L2 cache for food I want to eat soon.

What's wrong with the fridge analogy?

It's an analogy for a reason. It bothers me when people combat analogies so incredibly hard. Of course, it is not really fitting or the same thing - it's an analogy.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#73

Post by echelon »

Spooky23 wrote: post #71
echelon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why you train your skills by doing the correct movement over and over again. Yes, but can you make this to go faster ?

Train harder. Develop habits.

I think we're in the "punch card" phase of biology. I'd be willing to bet (timeline uncertain) that there will be shortcuts to this process.

For now, opportunity cost rules the day. I'm 120% maxed out.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#74

Post by chaxor »

satvikpendem wrote: post #18
jjtheblunt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a great comment, seriously. It just made me start thinking and then I realized perhaps another analogy is a just in time compiler where code or skills used often enough, your body manages to compile into native neurological code and stores that appropriately.

It is always funny to see brain metaphors morph to resemble our current stage of technological development, as the years go by. First it was anima, or hydraulic analogies of spirits and fluid moving through the body. Then it was clocks, the mechanistic processes of the brain. And so on and so on until today we metaphorize the brain to be like computer hardware. In vogue as well is comparing it to neural networks, due…

The next metaphor would be quantum computers.

There are a few that have started suggesting quantum mechanics playing a large role in cognition, but very few take them seriously (obviously it has an effect, but likely much can be understood more classically, etc).

The fact that few are moving toward that style of thinking seems to give a bit more credibility to NNs being closer to the correct model. If spiking NNs take off more, we'll probably see more arguments around that, and if Blue Brain's full in-silico modeling takes off we may see the succinct description given by those studies used to describe ideas. However, to first approximation, NNs and spiking NNs aren't really a bad way to reason about large descriptions of brain dynamics, in many circumstances.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#76

Post by Balgair »

lacrimacida wrote: post #37

Is cerebellum responsible for muscle memory?

Not really, but it can be involved for some tasks. 'Muscle Memory' is a bit of a complex thing. It's not so much the firing of the neurons, as much as it is the timing of that firing. Your reaction time is at the ~5ms level. Much longer than the muscles need to move in concert to, say, hit a 3-pointer. Controlling all of that can take place all the way from the brain down to the ganglia of the spinal chord. Drinking a cup of tea while reading will mostly take place before the brain gets a chance to intervene, for example. While riding a bike will involve more of the brain. I want to stress, it's a complex and not well studied area of active research.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#77

Post by Balgair »

agumonkey wrote: post #59
jbandela1 wrote: post #4

> The cerebellum has a repeated, almost crystal-like neural structure: As a software engineer who did neurosurgery residency, my intuition/guess is that the cerebellum is kind of like the FPGA of the brain. The cerebrum is great for doing very complicated novel tasks, but it takes time and energy. The cerebellum on the other hand is specialized in being able to encode common tasks so it can do them with quickly and e…

I thought the cerebellum predated the rest ? Out of curiosity, having the kind of weird symptoms not far from what you describe as weird amnesia, do you know any books / resources to understand advanced brain neurology like this ? Thanks in advance

https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Science-Fifth-Kande...

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#78

Post by codetiger »

jbandela1 wrote: post #4

> The cerebellum has a repeated, almost crystal-like neural structure: As a software engineer who did neurosurgery residency, my intuition/guess is that the cerebellum is kind of like the FPGA of the brain. The cerebrum is great for doing very complicated novel tasks, but it takes time and energy. The cerebellum on the other hand is specialized in being able to encode common tasks so it can do them with quickly and e…

This comment is the best example of why I come to read comments in HN.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#79

Post by Balgair »

echelon wrote: post #49
armada651 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What signals cause rewiring of the cerebellum? Any signal, that's the point. The cerebellum learns the patterns of signals involved in motor control. This is why you train your skills by doing the correct movement over and over again. Once the cerebellum has adjusted to the correct motor signal patterns the correct movement will become effortless.

> This is why you train your skills by doing the correct movement over and over again. Yes, but can you make this to go faster ?

You'd have to apply an adverse stimulus in under a ~5ms threshold to actions that were 'wrong'. It would depend on the exact task you're trying to do though. That would then cause other areas to potentiate that specific movement/firing as incorrect.

Its a active area of research in sports and DoD. As you'd theoretically be able to train marksmen and athletes at a much faster and better rate. However, even really really fast computers aren't quite fast enough to apply the adverse stimulus to 'wrong' movements/firing.

Also, your computer better be really accurate and never mess up, or that person is going to have a hell of a time retraining their brain. Also, their brain may view that the clouds/temperature/itchy grass/breakfast are the reasons for the adverse stimulus, as this is all happening at in subconscious time frame. So, good luck there.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#80

Post by Retric »

chaxor wrote: post #74
satvikpendem wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always funny to see brain metaphors morph to resemble our current stage of technological development, as the years go by. First it was anima, or hydraulic analogies of spirits and fluid moving through the body. Then it was clocks, the mechanistic processes of the brain. And so on and so on until today we metaphorize the brain to be like computer hardware. In vogue as well is comparing it to neural networks, due…

The next metaphor would be quantum computers. There are a few that have started suggesting quantum mechanics playing a large role in cognition, but very few take them seriously (obviously it has an effect, but likely much can be understood more classically, etc). The fact that few are moving toward that style of thinking seems to give a bit more credibility to NNs being closer to the correct model. If spiking NNs tak…

There’s zero evidence that there’s anything more quantum mechanical about the brain than a brick. IE: Physical and chemical interactions that emerge from quantum behavior, but can be modeled just fine without QM.

Instead people seem to just equate two different complex things they don’t understand with each other.

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