Cerebellar connections

Input to the cerebellum includes the following:

- Proprioceptor, skin, and vestibular input from spinal cord and brainstem.

- Motor, cognitive, and sensory signals from the cerebral cortex through pontine nuclei in the huge corticopontine-cerebellar tract.

- Motor information from the inferior olivary nucleus

Details of these inputs are given in Table which is as shown below.

Cerebellar output goes to three major destinations:

- The ventrobasal thalamus that projects to the motor cortex, to alter corticospinal tract outflow

- The red nucleus, to alter the rubrospinal tract output

- Reticular and vestibular nuclei to modulate the activity of medial motor pathways

These common input–output relations are depicted in figure which is as shown below; however there are variations on this arrangement for various parts of the cerebellum.

                           Table: Principle inputs to the cerebellum
 

          Figure: Main connections of the cerebellum. Here, cf=climbing fibers; mf=mossy fibers