Cerebellum, The: Brain for an Implicit Self

Product Author Bios

Dr. Masao Ito, Japan’s most respected and leading neuroscientist, is professor emeritus and former dean of the medical faculty at the University of Tokyo, and the founding director of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute. He has served as president of many international scientific organizations, including the International Brain Research Organization, the International Union of Physiological Sciences, the Interscience Congress of Scientific Organizations, the Human Frontier Science Program, the Science Council of Japan, and the Japan Neuroscience Society. Dr. Ito won the 2006 Gruber Neuroscience Prize.

Leading neuroscientist Dr. Masao Ito advances a detailed and fascinating view of what the cerebellum contributes to brain function.  The cerebellum has been seen as primarily involved in coordination of body movement control, facilitating the learning of motor skills such as those involved in walking, riding a bicycle, or playing a piano. The cerebellum is now viewed as an assembly of numerous neuronal machine modules, each of which provides an implicit learning capability to various types of motor control. The cerebellum enables us to unconsciously learn motor skills through practice by forming internal models simulating control system properties of the body parts.

Based on these remarkable advances in our understanding of motor control mechanisms of the cerebellum, Ito presents a still larger view of the cerebellum as serving a higher level of brain functions beyond movements, including the implicit part of the thought and cognitive processes that manipulate knowledge. Ito extends his investigation of the cerebellum to discuss neural processes that may be involved implicitly in such complex mental actions as having an intuition, imagination, hallucination, or delusion.

Table of Contents

Preface     viii

Chapter 1: Neuronal Circuitry: The Key to Unlocking the Brain     1

Chapter 2: Traditional Views of the Cerebellum     22

Chapter 3: The Cerebellum as a Neuronal Machine     29

Chapter 4: Input and Output Pathways in the Cerebellar Cortex     44

Chapter 5: Inhibitory Interneurons and Glial Cells in the Cerebellar Cortex     51

Chapter 6: Pre- and Post-Cerebellar Neurons     60

Chapter 7: Conjunctive Long-Term Depression (LTD)     69

Chapter 8: Multiplicity and Persistency of Synaptic Plasticity     81

Chapter 9: Network Models     90

Chapter 10: Ocular Reflexes     105

Chapter 11: Somatic and Autonomic Reflexes     121

Chapter 12: Adaptive Control            System Models     139

Chapter 13: Voluntary Motor Control     150

Chapter 14: Voluntary Eye Movement     159

Chapter 15: Internal Models for Voluntary Motor Control     167

Chapter 16: Motor Actions and Tool Use     181

Chapter 17: Cognitive Functions     193

Chapter 18: Concluding Thoughts     204

References     213

Index     261