Cerebellum and Human Evolution: A Comparative and Information Theory Perspective

Abstract

The cerebral cortex occupies a prominent place in the social brain hypothesis, which posits that human brain evolution has largely been shaped by social interactions in an increasingly more complex group structure and the associated cognitive tasks at the cerebral cortical level. Social interactions are adaptive behaviors in responses to selection pressure and are also the sources of selection pressure. Complex social interactions both require and foster communication.To communicate and transmit information, individual members of the group must acquire a common language of communication, most certainly via imitation. Hurley has recently proposed a shared circuits model for imitation. This model has implicated many cerebral cortical structures, including the mirror neuron system. In this model, a basic element supporting complex behavior leading to imitation is active perception. Neuroplasticity mechanisms in the cerebellum and particularly in the neocerebellum may be the major provider of this critical function such that active perception constitutes part of the cerebellar function of procedural learning, or vice versa. In this chapter, the role of the cerebellum in the evolution of complex behaviors is examined. Data from fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal are summarized to show a phylogenetic expansion of the neocerebellum to interact with the neocortex. Within mammals, there is a progressive increase in the capacity of the cerebellum to code and process information from mouse, rat, cat, rhesus monkey, and human. The increasingly expanding interactions between the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum operating with a high information coding and processing capacity may uniquely contribute to the acquisition of complex behavior including language and communication for social interaction -a major hallmark of human evolution.

Consensus Paper: The Role of the Cerebellum in Perceptual Processes

“… Removing the legacy of cerebellar motor control theories. At present, most explanations for cerebellar involvement in non-motor-related behaviors assume that evolution has adopted cerebellar motor control computational mechanisms to non-motor tasks [ 58 , 73 , 92 , 211 , 220 , 223 – 226 ], including, for example, a presumed general role for the cerebellum in timing not only of muscle activations during movement but also of sensory perception [ 98 , 227 ]. While our analysis of cerebellar cortical circuitry questions the circuitry-based evidence for the original timing hypothesis [ 205 ], we do expect that any disruption in sensory data acquisition control may very well be particularly apparent with tasks involving precise timing (see the section by Dr. Ivry, “ Sensory Processing and the Cerebellum: Timing (R.B.…”

A study on the cognitive model of robot sensorimotor system1

“…2, the input and output expressions are established between the granular cells, the Purkinje cells, the deep nucleus, the mossy fibers, the parallel fibers and the climbing fibers. The expressions are as follows [25]:…”

“…Among them, the action evaluation is learned in the striosome, and the behavior selection is carried out in the basal ganglia. The dopaminergic input from the compact part of the substantia niqra is regarded as a guidable signal for the action evaluation [25][26][27]. It is used to improve the behavior expression of the biggest reward caused by the action, so as to acquire the more accurate behavior.…”