Maintenance of posture and balance. Maintenance of muscle tone. Coordination of voluntary movements. Initiation takes place in the motor cortex but is modified at the level of the cerebellum. Afferent pathways The cerebellum receives information from the spinal cord and vestibular nuclei.
Input derives from mossy fibers and climbing fibers.
Climbing fibers originate in the inferior olivary complex and project to the dendritic arbors of the Purkinje cells. Efferent pathways The Purkinje cell is the major projection neuron of the cerebellum. It projects to deep cerebellar nuclei, the red nucleus and the reticular system. Intrinsic neurons Intrinsic neurons include the granule cells, the stellate cells, basket cells and Golgi cells. Granule cells send parallel fibers to the molecular layer where they run perpendicular to the Purkinje cell dendrites.