Cerebellar control of thalamocortical circuits for cognitive function: A review of pathways and a proposed mechanism

Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Mia B. Fox¹  Detlef H. Heck²  Yu Liu²  Brittany Correia Chapman³  Samuel S. McAfee⁴ 

[1] Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, College of Medicine, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN, United States;Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth, MN, United States;Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, United States;St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, United States;

关键词: cerebellum;    cognition;    communication through coherence (CTC);    cerebrocerebellar communication;    cerebellothalamic tract;    corticothalamic circuits;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnsys.2023.1126508

 received in 2022-12-17, accepted in 2023-03-13,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

There is general agreement that cerebrocerebellar interactions via cerebellothalamocortical pathways are essential for a cerebellar cognitive and motor functions. Cerebellothalamic projections were long believed target mainly the ventral lateral (VL) and part of the ventral anterior (VA) nuclei, which project to cortical motor and premotor areas. Here we review new insights from detailed tracing studies, which show that projections from the cerebellum to the thalamus are widespread and reach almost every thalamic subnucleus, including nuclei involved in cognitive functions. These new insights into cerebellothalamic pathways beyond the motor thalamus are consistent with the increasing evidence of cerebellar cognitive function. However, the function of cerebellothalamic pathways and how they are involved in the various motor and cognitive functions of the cerebellum is still unknown. We briefly review literature on the role of the thalamus in coordinating the coherence of neuronal oscillations in the neocortex. The coherence of oscillations, which measures the stability of the phase relationship between two oscillations of the same frequency, is considered an indicator of increased functional connectivity between two structures showing coherent oscillations. Through thalamocortical interactions coherence patterns dynamically create and dissolve functional cerebral cortical networks in a task dependent manner. Finally, we review evidence for an involvement of the cerebellum in coordinating coherence of oscillations between cerebral cortical structures. We conclude that cerebellothalamic pathways provide the necessary anatomical substrate for a proposed role of the cerebellum in coordinating neuronal communication between cerebral cortical areas by coordinating the coherence of oscillations.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Heck, Fox, Correia Chapman, McAfee and Liu.