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What does the cerebellum do?

sarahconstantin.substack.com

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Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#91

Post by danw1979 »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #19
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.

Did you also read the comment by Steve Byrens with his own theory on what the Cerebellum does, and the author's reply of "seems right" ?!

I missed this, but after reading Steve’s comment, I don’t see much in his “little time machine” theory of function that conflicts with the original article’s ideas, except on the classical conditioning point.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#93

Post by BurningFrog »

mynameishere wrote: post #57
nabla9 wrote: post #39

There are people without cerebellum. It affects thought and emotion. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/16/3927897...

More famously, Joey Ramone didn't have one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjWZJQyykeM

One of the greatest rhymes is rock history!

   Now I guess I'll have to tell 'em
   That I got no cerebellum

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#94

Post by chaxor »

Retric wrote: post #80
chaxor wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your comment has a feel to it of a rebuttal; but I hope it's clear that the original comment has effectively this same stancen as this.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#96

Post by [deleted] »

dogmatism wrote: post #35
lostlogin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously not OP and not in this position, but I have worked with people who left surgical training positions and their reasons were health and a realisation that they would miss every family milestone, never get a real break and have every part of their life revolve around their job with the money and god-like power not compensating for that. Obviously that’s one side of the equation, I don’t have any surgeon friend…

OP said "did" implying finished. It's a six year residency minimum, though the first year is general surgery. It's not often people do the whole damn thing, then decide to bail. Usually it's after 2 or 3 years Though some people are less burdened by golden handcuffs and sunk-cost fallacy Plus, I've never met a happy (or sane) neurosurgeon

[deleted]

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#97

Post by weinzierl »

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.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#98

Post by mjan22640 »

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 ?

The pattern of muscle activation timing in the correct move form needs to be figured out by exploration of the space.

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#99

Post by red75prime »

bsdpufferfish wrote: post #87
doug_durham wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting a metaphysical structure? I don't understand what you are getting at.

Even if you are a full materialist it's fallacious to assume there is one "part" that does something, like it's a factory assembly. Instead it might be a function of the composition of brain parts. It's like asking which part of a bat makes it fly. The wings? Well kind of, but you need more than that. I guess you can fly without feet... it's just not a well formed question.

If you ask question a bit differently, then it's not a mystery at all. Why brain parts that have neural structure, which is conductive to fine and agile motor control, perform motor control?

Re: What does the cerebellum do?

#100

Post by cubefox »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #68
cubefox wrote: post #12

So classical conditioning in humans requires special cells in the Cerebellum (Purkinje cells), which can even do single-cell learning. Which artificial neurons can't do, as only weights (artificial synapses) are updated. So how is classical conditioning actually implemented in artificial neural networks? I assume there is some minimum network which makes it work.

> special cells in the Cerebellum (Purkinje cells), which can even do single-cell learning. As a neuroscience novice, I've always assumed that something about the gross model of the neuron, as far as I understand it, cannot be correct or is incomplete. Because I never understood why single cells aren't already performing single cell learning, given that there are always far more dendrites than axons. Since this chara…

Well, not all incoming signals get the same weight for the outcoming signal, as the dendrites are e.g. more or less close to the part of the cell where the spikes are generated. But this computation is just analogous to the connection weights together with the activation function in artificial neural networks. That's not what enables classical conditioning in single Cerebellum cells.
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