The cerebellum is a highly specialized neuronal circuitry that likely evolved to solve a very specific problem in sensory-motor control. In the human brain, the cerebellar circuitry has dramatically expanded and contributes to virtually every cognitive function, including working memory, language, and social cognition. What is this elusive computation that the cerebellum adds to cortical processing across domains? Dr. Diedrichsen will begin by summarizing some insights about cerebellar function from the domain of motor control and learning, which indicates that the cerebellum is critical for prediction and fast error-based learning. He will present the first results from an unpublished large functional neuroimaging study, in which he characterizes cerebellar function across cognitive domains, and take the first steps to illuminate general principles of cerebellar computation.

Faculty Host: Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, PhD, Professor of Psychology and Director of Cognitive Imaging; Principal Investigator at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute

For questions about the lecture, please contact [email protected].

Those who wish to meet the speaker during the visit should contact Nikolaus Kriegeskorte.

This seminar is part of the Systems, Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience Seminar Series at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute, which focuses on cognition and decision making research. Internationally renowned speakers present their recent work on these topics using behavioral, neurobiological and computational approaches. Seminars take place approximately every other week on Tuesdays at 4 pm in the Jerome L. Greene Science Center (9th floor).