Chapter 13 Salient anatomic features of the cortico-ponto-cerebellar pathway

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This chapter focuses on the cerebrocerebellar pathway, synaptically interrupted in the pontine nuclei. Recent studies of the primate corticopontine projection show that the neocerebellum—in addition to connections from motor and sensory areas—receives connections from various association areas of the cerebral cortex, some of which are thought to be primarily engaged in cognitive tasks. The anatomic data on the origin of corticopontine fibers needs to be supplemented with physiological experiments to clarify their functional properties at the single-cell level. The scarcity of corticopontine connections from the prefrontal cortex in the monkey may not seem readily compatible with a prominent role of the neocerebellum in certain cognitive tasks. Corticopontine and pontocerebellar lamellae have similar shapes and orientations but appear to differ in other respects. Corticopontine terminal fields are sharply delimited, apparently without gradual overlap between projections from different sites in the cortex, whereas pontocerebellar lamellae are fuzzier and exhibit gradual overlap of neuronal populations projecting to different targets.

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