Cerebellar Lobules and Stripes, Viewed from Development, Topographic Axonal Projections, Functional Localization, and Interspecies Homology

Abstract

Cerebellar lobules are formed by the structural foliation of the cerebellar cortex. Cerebellar longitudinal stripes, another landmark structure of the cerebellar cortex, are the reflection of Purkinje cell subsets of specific molecular expression patterns. The stripes arise from rearrangement of the embryonic Purkinje cell clusters. The afferent and efferent axonal projection patterns are tightly correlated to both the lobular and striped organizations in the cerebellum. This relationship determines the involvement of lobules and stripes in particular cerebellar function and reveals the interspecies homology of the cerebellar organization. It is proposed that crus I in the rodent cerebellum and crus I + II in the primate cerebellum are homologous to each other in the ansiform area. The anatomical basis for the three major locations of the cognitive function in the human cerebellum (crus I + II, vermal lobule VII, and lobule HIX) has been proposed in the rodent cerebellum by supposing the interspecies homology.