Abstract
One of the earliest consensuses reached by cerebellar physiologists is that an intact cerebellum is necessary for optimal motor performance. But how and where motor commands get adjusted to the defies of a perceptual error due to adversities in motor execution remains elusive. Oculomotor physiologists have tackled these questions using an exemplar model for motor control, eye movements, and a multifaceted approach consisting of correlation of structure and function, effects of lesions, neuronal recordings, and modeling. This chapter reviews the literature and provides evidence that the cerebellum exerts control over all types of eye movements and that this control is distributed. In addition to the online control of eye movements, the cerebellum plays a key role in motor learning. Unifying theories of motor control suggest that the cerebellum is part of the neuronal circuit responsible for constructing predictions of the consequences of the motor command signal and predictions that are necessary for fine movement control.
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Support from NIH-NINDS grant RO1DC016231 (PMB) and MICINN-FEDER grant BFU2015-64515-P (AMP).
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Blazquez, P.M., Pastor, A.M. (2022). Cerebellar Control of Eye Movements. In: Manto, M.U., Gruol, D.L., Schmahmann, J.D., Koibuchi, N., Sillitoe, R.V. (eds) Handbook of the Cerebellum and Cerebellar Disorders. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23810-0_49
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