This book uses an evolutionary perspective to open up the exciting body of work that is cerebellar research. Understanding the brain is of interest to many people, from many different backgrounds, and for many different reasons, and understanding the cerebellum is a significant step towards the wider challenge of understanding the brain.
This volume offers a comprehensive history of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL), one of the major marine laboratories in the United States and a leader in using marine organisms to study fundamental physiological concepts. Beginning with its founding as the Harpswell Laboratory of Tufts University in 1898, David H. Evans follows its evolution from a teaching facility to a research center for distinguished renal and epithelial physiologists. He also describes how it became the site of major advances in cytokinesis, regeneration, cardiac and vascular physiology, hepatic physiology, endocrinology and toxicology, as well as studies of the comparative physiology of marine organisms. Fundamental physiological concepts in the context of the discoveries made at the MDIBL are explained and the social and administrative history of this renowned facility is described.
The cerebellum is an intriguing component of the brain. In humans it occupies only 10% of the brain volume, yet has approximately 69 billion neurons; that is 80% of the nerve cells in the brain. The cerebellum first arose in jawed vertebrates such as sharks, and early vertebrates also have an additional cerebellum-like structure in the hindbrain. Shark cerebellum-like structures function as adaptive filters to discriminate 'self' from 'other' in sensory inputs. It is likely that the true cerebellum evolved from these cerebellum-like precursors, and that their adaptive filter functionality was adopted for motor control; paving the way for the athleticism and movement finesse that we see in swimming, running, climbing and flying vertebrates. This book uses an evolutionary perspective to open up the exciting body of work that is cerebellar research to a wide audience. Understanding the brain is of interest to many people, from many different backgrounds, and for many different reasons. Therefore, understanding cerebellum is a significant step towards the wider challenge of understanding the brain. This book will be of interest to neuroscientists, neurologists and psychologists, in addition to computer scientists, and engineers concerned with machine/human interactions and robotics.
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