Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. From now until the launch of Oxford Events, new events cannot be published or edited on OxTalks while all existing records are migrated to the new platform. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period.
From 16th, Oxford Events will launch on a new website: events.ox.ac.uk, and event submissions will resume. You will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
Abstract:
An impressive body of research over the past 35 years has implicated the human cerebellum in a broad range of functions beyond motor control, including language, working memory, cognitive control, and social cognition. The relatively uniform anatomy and physiology of the cerebellar cortex has given rise to the universal cerebellar transform hypothesis (UCT), the idea that the cerebellum can be conceptualized as a module providing a basic computation that is exploited across diverse domains. Proposed UCTs focus on the concepts of prediction and coordination. To make these ideas computationally meaningful, we need to specify the constraints on cerebellar processing: What are the types of prediction supported by the cerebellum and what do we mean when speaking of “mental coordination”? I will address these questions in two parts. First, using variants of sensorimotor adaptation tasks, I will describe properties of a cerebellar-dependent learning process that ensure our movements remain exquisitely calibrated. Second, I will describe how the results have motivated a new hypothesis concerning how the cerebellum might contribute to cognition, focusing on its role in supporting dynamic mental transformations.
