The present volume consists of papers prepared for a conference on the cerebellum which was held at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda on 15 -17 May 1980. This was the first gen eral conference on the cerebellum since the 1972 symposium in Portland, Oregon, which was convened to celebrate the publica tion of the last volume of the Comparative Anatomy and Histolo gy of the Cerebellum by Larsell and Jansen. In organizing the 1980 Conference, we elected to emphasize ad vances in neuroanatomy over other aspects because, in our view, morphological investigation continues to playa large...

The origins of this book go back to the first electron microscopic studies of the central nervous system. The cerebellar cortex was from the first an object of close study in the electron microscope, repeating in modern cytology and neuroanatomy the role it had in the hands of RAMON y CAJAL at the end of the nineteenth century. The senior author vividly remembers a day early in 1953 when GEORGE PALADE, with whom he was then working, showed him an electron micrograph of a cerebellar glomerulus, saying "That is what the synapse should look like. " It is true that the tissue was swollen and the...

Recent physiologic investigations have shown that the deep cerebellar nuclei may play an important role in the initiation and monitoring of skilled move ments. Much of this physiologic work has been carried out in the absence of a secure foundation in neuroanatomical information. Although the main sources of the afferent fibers and the major terminations of the efferent fibers related to these nuclei have been known for many years, remarkably little information about the organization of the nuclei themselves has been collected. The kinds of nerve cells, their arrangement within the nuclei,...