Word: cerebellums
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...intriguing abnormality has also been found in the cerebellum of both autistic children and adults. An important class of cells known as Purkinje cells (after the Czech physiologist who discovered them) is far smaller in number. And this, believes neuroscientist Eric Courchesne, of the University of California at San Diego, offers a critical clue to what goes so badly awry in autism. The cerebellum, he notes, is one of the brain's busiest computational centers, and the Purkinje cells are critical elements in its data-integration system. Without these cells, the cerebellum is unable to do its job, which...
...scramble through my four options again, and reject them all. Now hopelessly dazed, I enter the thick fog of the lower cerebellum, mindlessly repeating the physical motion of skiing. In situations like this, the reptile part of our brain takes the last instruction from the conscious mind and just goes with it until the heart stops beating. The rhythm of my skis on the snow is mesmerizing. I let go of any strategy, or any planning, or any long-term thoughts of any kind. There is just me and the hill and the sound of my skis...
...parents owned a meat market. As a boy in Louisiana, he first learned about his future specialty by cutting up cows' brains for sweetbreads. "I found them the most interesting part of the cow's anatomy," he recalls. "They were visually pleasing--lots of folds, convolutions and patterns. The cerebellum was more interesting to look at than steak." The butchers' son became a neuroscientist, and it was he who discovered the short circuit in the brain that lets emotions drive action before the intellect gets a chance to intervene...
...brain. Other sorts of memory are handled by other areas. The amygdala, for example, an almond-size knot of nerve cells located close to the brain stem, specializes in memories of fear; the basal ganglia, clumps of gray matter within both cerebral hemispheres, handle habits and physical skills; the cerebellum, at the base of the brain, governs conditioned learning (as when Pavlov's dogs salivated at the ringing of the dinner bell) and some reflexes...
...very boring," he says of his brief time as a pre-med. "I decided pretty quickly that it was only worth doing something that boring if you wanted to be a doctor. I've still got a smattering of medical knowledge lodged somewhere at the bottom of my cerebellum...