The Cerebellum

[wellwisher]

All the divisive political emotional thinking is getting tiring, so I thought I would start a topic we can all share, since it applies to all humans on all sides of the divide.

The cerebellum is the part of the brain at the back of the skull in vertebrates. Its function is to coordinate and regulate muscular activity. Although smaller than their cerebrum, the cerebellum has 69 billion neurons, compare to 16 billion neurons for the cerebral cortex. It has more neurons, but less synapses per neuron.

The cerebellum allows smooth muscle movement; timing and coordination. Robots and video game characters do not yet move as smoothly as natural movement, since they are cerebrally trained; programmers, but lack cerebellum training. My guess is more neurons with fewer synapses, is about done deals; perfect. The cerebral; fewer neurons with more synapses is more about open concept.

The other day, I was thinking about the cerebellum and how speaking, reading and writing all require the cerebellum to control and time various muscle movements; eyes, voice and hands, in ways that allow a consistency of input/output, so human language could form, persist and be copied.

Modern human language is considered quite new, in terms of human evolution. Logically it would have needed a cerebellum advancement; update, for the smooth vocal muscle output, that can consistently express the subtle sounds of words. Damage to the cerebellum can make it hard to talk properly; undermine the muscle timing precision needed for language,

The cerebellum is also important to all forms of artistic expression from singing, dancing, painting, acting, etc. It is needed to help coordinate movement for physical jobs, sports and even warfare. In many ways the cerebellum advancement, no too long ago, allowed culture to advance; increasingly precise fabrication of tools, structures, social interactions, etc.

What is even more intriguing is our body, when we walk; human action, we use pairs of arms and legs, which work in opposite ways to help balance the body. This 2-D movement; equal and opposite, may quite well underly cause and affect; logic and other 2-D concepts. Yoga and many forms of martial arts teach a connection between movement and clarity of thought; reground the cerebral.

I like to go for daily walks. This clears my head and often gets my cerebral brain flowing in thought. Is the cerebellum the foundation of thought? It is not the pinnacle. But when we talk, write and discuss, our ideas need to go through the cerebellum, last, to be polished.

 

[wellwisher]

If you think in terms of the advancement of human language, which was first spoken, and then written much later, as the cerebellum wiring improved, the needed complex muscle movements could get more and more complex; evolve. When humans could not talk with good vocal muscular coordination and timing of today; grunt, language needed to be very simple and crude thereby limiting what could be shared; communicated. As the cerebellum evolved the mechanics of spoken language, vocabulary became more advanced.

Steven Hawking, the great British Physicists in the wheel chair, thought great things, but this would not have been known, if he did not have technology to help him output his thoughts. However, the machine talking was not advanced enough to allow him to express his deepest feelings using subtle fluctuations in the voice, eyes and face, that the cerebellum can offer.

Science has shown that the appearance of civilization occurred millennia before the first stable civilizations about 6000 years ago. This suggests that cerebral thinking, may have outpaced the cerebellum, output for speech. Like a natural born artist, that can build things; draw on cave walls, one may not be able to teach how they do it. In those aborted civilizations, as the artists and doers passed, so went their ideas, with these start up civilizations going into a state of disrepair.

The cerebellum based communication of written language; cerebellum hand-eye coordination, was a major advancement, that allowed humans to record their thoughts, so the future could repair and advance. The invention of written language; read and write, allowed the first stable civilizations.

Our entire persona or our outward personality of movement, speech, style and makeup is all dependent on cerebellum polishing. From this social mask grid within the cerebellum, for social communication, a secondary center of consciousness would evolve in the cerebral; ego.

The relationship between the ego and cerebellum is often symbolized as the Knight; cerebral, and his Horse; cerebellum. The ego through will and choice; practice, can learn to lead their cerebellum horse; learn to dance and become good. The cerebellum is the bridge between the ego and inner self, since both use this; willful and natural movement. This bridge also allow the inner self to communicate through subtle cerebellum inductions; body sensations such a gut feelings. The Knight trusts his Horse to sense things that he may not notice; inner self and nature, as well as help in battle; instincts.

 

[metis]

Is the cerebellum the foundation of thought?

Depends on how defines "thought".

A housefly has no brain, thus its reactions are made by the notochord, if my memory is correct. If you accidently touch a hot flame, it's actually your own spinal cord that quickly causes you to pull back. This is why you'll after jerk back before actually feeling the pain cognitively.

 

[icehorse]

Some interesting ideas in the OP!

I'll toss a few more points into the mix, from the perspective of motor skills and motor skill acquisition:

- When we talk about movement, I think we ought to say that movement is done by the motor system, which includes not only the brain, but the spinal cord, and all the neurons and nerves throughout the body. These days, people studying movement are tending towards the perspective that movement often happens in a perception / action loop (PA). An animal perceives a thing and responds with an action. And often the action causes changes to what's perceived, so there is a loop.

What's important to understand is that often the PA loop must function faster than a full loop communication between the body, the brain, and the body again can happen. In these cases, the brain is sending data to the body, but not instructions. Wow!

- I would say that sometimes the ego is the rider and the motor system. But two big qualifiers with that idea:

1 - For decades, coaches used a bio-mechanical approach to teaching motor skills. The idea was that the body is like a complex robot, that there are bio-mechanically correct ways to move, and that the coach could somehow micro-manage the athlete into moving in bio-mechanically correct ways. Ha!
a - First off, the best athletes and artists and musicians and craftsmen, and so on, MUST and DO vary their movements from "go" to "go". At least one reason for this is to avoid repetitive motion injuries.
b - Second, our bodies and movement systems are exceedingly complex. For any given movement, there are zillions of ways the movement system can execute the task. So the idea that a coach knows how a movement should happen is absurd.

So the big takeaway here is that the ego sometimes tells the motor system WHAT it wants. But when the ego attempts to explain HOW to do it, chaos ensues.

2 - Most of the time, the motor system does its thing without the ego's assistance at all.

So the ego thinks it's in charge of everything, but it's actually in charge of very little

For anyone still reading this and interested, a good place to learn more is Rob Gray's "Perception Action" podcast. Rob is now a coach for the Red Sox!

 

[wellwisher]

Some interesting ideas in the OP!

I'll toss a few more points into the mix, from the perspective of motor skills and motor skill acquisition:

- When we talk about movement, I think we ought to say that movement is done by the motor system, which includes not only the brain, but the spinal cord, and all the neurons and nerves throughout the body. These days, people studying movement are tending towards the perspective that movement often happens in a perception / action loop (PA). An animal perceives a thing and responds with an action. And often the action causes changes to what's perceived, so there is a loop.

What's important to understand is that often the PA loop must function faster than a full loop communication between the body, the brain, and the body again can happen. In these cases, the brain is sending data to the body, but not instructions. Wow!

- I would say that sometimes the ego is the rider and the motor system. But two big qualifiers with that idea:

1 - For decades, coaches used a bio-mechanical approach to teaching motor skills. The idea was that the body is like a complex robot, that there are bio-mechanically correct ways to move, and that the coach could somehow micro-manage the athlete into moving in bio-mechanically correct ways. Ha!
a - First off, the best athletes and artists and musicians and craftsmen, and so on, MUST and DO vary their movements from "go" to "go". At least one reason for this is to avoid repetitive motion injuries.
b - Second, our bodies and movement systems are exceedingly complex. For any given movement, there are zillions of ways the movement system can execute the task. So the idea that a coach knows how a movement should happen is absurd.

So the big takeaway here is that the ego sometimes tells the motor system WHAT it wants. But when the ego attempts to explain HOW to do it, chaos ensues.

2 - Most of the time, the motor system does its thing without the ego's assistance at all.

So the ego thinks it's in charge of everything, but it's actually in charge of very little

For anyone still reading this and interested, a good place to learn more is Rob Gray's "Perception Action" podcast. Rob is now a coach for the Red Sox!

When you think about it, all the muscles and nerves of the body, feedback to the cerebellum. This is like a giant signally and action apparatus. The feedback includes loops that are connected to muscle memory; fundamentals of movement. The ego only has to think a command line, and the cerebellum and body take care of the logistics.

I remember years ago having a nightmare. I was doing unconscious mind research on myself. The dream had good data but it made my body very anxious. However, another part of me was trying to be calm and observe. The cerebellum/body; horse, was spooked, while my ego; cerebral was semi-detached, trying to be rational and calm my scared horse. I was able to calm my horse; body, with prayer.

The cerebellum appears to be connected to the limbic system; since various feelings will direct the type of action/motion needed. Praying was a way to influence the limbic system, so the anxiety of my horse could change. Although I walked in the valley of shadows of death, there is no fear. I then finished the data collection.

When one is in the zone; sport metaphor, the body or horse is free to run. But often emotional thinking, alters the limbic output from the cerebral side, and can inhibit the horse from running free; second guessing.

It appears the inner self is also connected to the cerebellum. The center of animal consciousness; animal inner self, is geared around various forms of instinctive motion loops for hunting, gathering, scavenging, building, eating, drinking, signally, mating, fight and flight, etc. The cerebellum is an unconscious mind interface between the inner self and the ego; body sensations. When I write, I create, think and reason using signals in my body to help me judge; inner self cerebellum interface. It is possible to isolate the various parts of the brain, from the inside, and use other circuitry to organize thought in more natural ways.

 

[icehorse]

to go a little further, with the context of movement vs. thought.

Creatures execute a wide variety of "skillful" movements at speeds much faster than a perception-cognitive planning-command issuing loop can achieve. In other words, there is not enough time for a baseball batter to:
- perceive the ball in flight
- make a plan to swing the bat
- send those swinging instructions to the arms

So - unlike conscious thought - many motor "skills" must somehow reside in the spinal cord - neural system. That's cool !

Sports coaches think in terms of their athletes "acquiring skills". This makes sense, athletes learn to hit balls, throw balls and so on, and they can clearly be reliable, skillful experts at these tasks.

But one of the questions that motor skill experts are pondering is this: When we talk about skill acquisition, what is it that we're acquiring?

 

[wellwisher]

The cerebellum controls muscular timing. A Symphony Orchestra can coordinate all the instruments, due to the processing of muscular timing controlled by the cerebellum; hand-ear coordination. It appears the cerebellum can even time a fast ball or wait last instant for the curve ball to break.

One needs to be in the zone, and not let the ego mess with the needed timing; let the horse lead over rough terrain. Be one with the ball. Visualizing sets goal. The horse knows best how to make the body reach that goal under conditions that need the reflexes of our inner animal. The inner animal or cerebellum has 69 billion neurons, while the ego uses part of the cerebral's 16 billion.

 

[wellwisher]

Depends on how defines "thought".

A housefly has no brain, thus its reactions are made by the notochord, if my memory is correct. If you accidently touch a hot flame, it's actually your own spinal cord that quickly causes you to pull back. This is why you'll after jerk back before actually feeling the pain cognitively.

If you look at a fly, it can give the semblance of consciousness, based on a motor nerve foundation, without a whole brain to steer. With this conscious motor foundation in place; cerebellum in humans, evolution could build upward into the cerebral matter.

This more ancient foundation of motion, may have served as the template, for the next step upward into cerebral consciousness. We have opposing motion of arms and legs as we walk. Is this the motor foundation of cause and affect and the polarization of opposites? Many people talk with the hands or move around as they talk.

Human thought requires language. One can process thought without human language; sensory language, but you cannot communicate and learn from others without human language. For the first effective spoken language to form, the cerebellum was needed to coordinate the vocal cords for distinct and repetitive sound association and feeling tags; words and memories. Words are stored in the cerebral matter, with our thoughts rearranging the furniture.

Written language, which appeared more recently, is also processed by the cerebellum; hand-eye coordination. It has the affect of slowing down communication, since writing is slower than talking. So why was slowing down communication; writing, evolutionary, compared to just motor mouth? It has to due with structuring thought, since not all structuring is the same; writer's block. It has to build on a foundation to flow and last.

If we did not have the cerebellum we would be like ghosts. What give us a sense of physical presence is processed in the cerebellum; our mortal bodies.

 

[wellwisher]

All entertainment, including sports, would not be possible without the cerebellum polishing our timing and movement. While sports and/or entertainment, such as song, dance and theater, are universally enjoyed, since it is part of the foundational brain.

The cerebellum, derived from the evolutionarily oldest part of the brain (hindbrain) is an excellent example of how cells within and between brain regions connect. It receives inputs (via axons) from neurons situated throughout the brain and spinal cord and in turn the cerebellum projects back to most regions of the brain and spinal cord (Fig. 1B) (Caligiore et al., 2017). Furthermore, the cerebellum has several subareas that are interconnected. The cerebellum is best known for controlling motor behaviors and balance, but because it connects directly or indirectly through an intermediate neuron with all regions of the nervous system it likely influences all behaviors (Hatten, 2020; Kebschull et al., 2020; Marek et al., 2018; Pisano et al., 2021; Schmahmann, 2019). Indeed, damage to the cerebellum around birth is the second highest risk factor for autism spectrum disorders (Wang et al., 2014). Furthermore, the cerebellum contains 80% of the neurons in the human brain (Azevedo et al., 2009), although it is smaller than the cerebral cortex because the granule cells (GCs) are not myelinated by oligodendrocytes (Leto et al., 2016). Thus, principles of proper cerebellar circuit formation likely have implications for development throughout the brain.

As stated above the cerebellum contain 80% of the brain's neurons but is smaller than the cerebral cortex. The reason is the granule cells (GCs) of the cerebellum are not myelinated by oligodendrocytes. The neurons of the cerebral cortex have an extra sheath around their axons that take up more space. I guess this design can move more data with fewer neurons.

The human persona or mask could conceptually is polished by the cerebellum since it is mostly body language, facial gestures, attitude, lines of bull and decorations.

 

[wellwisher]

What I like about the cerebellum, is it is a way to connect to the inner self; thalamus, and highest parts of the brain, through the cerebellum's foundational circuitry. This type of consciousness connection can be seen in sports, as the miracle play. The analogy would be "the gods of old" influencing the outcome; Hail Mary pass, leading to crowd excitement. These exceptional moments in sports are connected to the thalamus and inner self being expressed through the cerebellum. Marital arts and forms of spirituality reflect these connections; Buddhist Monks.

Unlike innovative cerebral ideas that take time to develop; more thalamus=cerebral loops, sports and movement activities; Diva, allows these connections to appear much more frequent and also in real time. It is back door way to the most advanced parts of the brain. In symbolism, the cerebellum would be your horse or an animal helper; trained yet instinctive. One can walk and day dream and not get hurt since the horse knows the way.

When exploring the unconscious mind, the cerebellum language link to the thalamus was based on body sensations, since horses cannot talk, but they can react using an intuitive body language; feelings and sensations in the heart, gut, body, etc. This is transferred to the cerebral for language translation, and then back to the cerebellum for typing.