More research on cerebellum and mental timing

Tadashi Yamazaki1, 3 and Shigeru Tanaka2  (1)  Laboratory for Motor Learning Control, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako Saitama, 351-0198, Japan (2)  Laboratory for Visual Neurocomputing, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako Saitama, 351-0198, Japan (3)  Present address: Strategic Planning Unit, RIKEN BSI-TOYOTA Collaboration Center, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako Saitama,351-0198, Japan Received: 30 June 2008  Accepted:7 May 2009  Published online: 5 June 2009 Abstract  A long-standing question in neuroscience is how the brain controls movement that requires precisely timed muscle activations. Studies using Pavlovian delay eyeblink conditioning provide good insight into this question. In delay eyeblink conditioning, which is believed to involve the cerebellum, a subject learns an interstimulus interval (ISI) between the onsets of a conditioned stimulus (CS) such as a tone and an unconditioned stimulus such as an airpuff to the eye. After a conditioning phase, the subject's eyes automatically close or blink when the ISI time has passed after CS onset. This timing information is thought to be represented in some way in the cerebellum. Several computational models of the cerebellum have been proposed to explain the mechanisms of time representation, and they commonly point to the granular layer network. This article will review these computational models and discuss the possible computational power of the cerebellum. Keywords  Cerebellum - Time - Delay eyeblink conditioning - Neural network models - Recurrent network - Granular layer Shigeru Tanaka Email: shigeru@riken.jp

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