Cerebellum size while the cerebrum decreased in size With both the development and implementation of motor tasks, visual-spatial skills and learning taking place in the cerebellum, the growth of the cerebellum is thought to have some form of correlation to greater human cognitive abilities. The lateral hemispheres of the cerebellum are now 2.7 times greater in both humans and apes than they are in monkeys. These changes in the cerebellum size cannot be explained by greater muscle mass. They show that either the development of the cerebellum is tightly linked to that of the rest of the brain or that neural
Anatomy of the cerebellum has been shown to undergo synaptic plasticity. This allows the circuitry of the cerebellar cortex to continuously adjust and fine-tune the output of the cerebellum, forming the basis of some types of motor learning and coordination. Each layer in the cerebellar cortex contains the various cell types that comprise this circuitry. This outermost layer of the cerebellar cortex contains two types of inhibitory interneurons: the stellate and basket cells. It also contains the dendritic arbors of Purkinje neurons and parallel fiber tracts from the granule cells. Both stellate and basket cells form GABAergic synapses onto Purkinje cell dendrites. The middle