Until recently, the human cerebellum was viewed primarily as a brain region that’s sole job was to coordinate motor movements; most neuroscientists didn’t think the cerebellum facilitated non-motor cognitive functions.
But around 1998, at the dawn of the 21st century, this motor-function-only view of the cerebellum started to shift.
Today, most neuroscientists agree that our so-called “little brain” plays a big role in cognition.
Notably, the cerebrum (“big brain”) has two cerebral hemispheres, and the cerebellum (“little brain”) has two cerebellar hemispheres.
When coordinating fluid movements, the right cerebellar and left cerebral hemispheres work together to coordinate motor skills on the right side of the body and vice versa.
The criss-cross functional connectivity of “up brain-down brain” is key to creating superfluidity in sports.
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In their January 2022 open-access paper, “Cerebellar Coordination of Neuronal Communication in Cerebral Cortex,” first author Samuel McAfee et al. explain how the cerebellum coordinates and optimizes cerebral cortical communication during cognitive processes much like it optimizes motor coordination… Moving forward, we need more research to better understand how cerebro-cerebellar connectivity coordinates fluid thinking.
