Cerebellum: Lobes – Anatomy Review

00:01 So let's talk a little bit more about the cerebellar lobes.

00:04 That's the important and clinically relevant part of this case.

00:07 There are three cerebellar lobes: the vermis, the hemispheres, and the flocculonodular lobe.

00:13 The vermis is that midline structure, right on the middle of the cerebellum.

00:17 It is important in controlling the trunk.

00:20 Truncal balance and coordination, our ability to sit upright and to walk in a straight line.

00:26 As we'll learn this, the vermis receives input from the spine to understand how our spine, arms, and legs are moving, and then sends output back to the spine to modulate our posture and our ability to walk.

00:40 The second are the hemispheres.

00:42 Those are the largest areas of the cerebellum.

00:45 There's an anterior hemisphere and a poster hemisphere on both sides of the brain.

00:50 The hemispheres are involved in controlling coordination of the arms and legs.

00:55 Appendicular balance, and coordination of language, and cognitive roles as well.

01:01 The hemispheres received their input from the brain as well as a little bit from the spine, modulate that signal, and then send it back to the brain to coordinate our arm and leg movement and all the rest of those important cognitive and language functions.

01:16 And then the last lobe is the flocculonodular lobe which is composed of both the flocculus and the nodulus.

01:22 This is important for coordination of eye and head movements, including vestibular tracking, that's moving the head and along with the eyes, coordination of the eyes and problems with the flocculonodular lobe can produce nystagmus.

01:36 And in postural and motor memory, important and coordinating the ears and the eyes down to the rest of the spine and the posture of the body.

01:46 So we talked about the three important lobes of the cerebellum, the hemisphere, the vermis, and the flocculonodular lobe.

01:53 And each of those is connected to the rest of the nervous system through a pathway.

01:57 So we also think about and we'll learn about three pathways.

02:01 The cerebellum is connected to the brain, to the spinal cord and trunk, and to the spinal cord and eyes.

02:07 And each of those pathways will correspond with one of the hemispheres, one of the lobes of the cerebellum.

02:16 The three pathways that we're going to learn about are the cerebro-cerebellar pathway, the spinocerebellar pathway, and the vestibulocerebellar pathway.

02:25 The cerebro-cerebellar pathway is important in connecting the brain to the cerebellum, and that pathway will relay primarily with the hemispheres of the cerebellum.

02:35 The spinocerebellar pathway is important for postural tone, keeping ourselves upright and in the straight line.

02:41 And we'll see that that relays with the vermis and the paravermis that area of the cerebellum just next to the midline.

02:48 And the vestibulocerebellar pathway is important in controlling eye movement and postural tone.

02:53 And so we'll see relays through the flocculonodular lobe.

02:57 When we're thinking about each of these pathways, the cerebro-cerebellum is primarily involved in the motor and non-motor coordination.

03:04 The spinocerebellar pathway with descending postural control and the vestibulocerebellum with head and eye movements.