## 7 Conclusions and Future Research  
This review aimed to collect information regarding the role of the cerebellum in the control of Anticipatory Postural Adjustments. It also supports the view that the function of the cerebellum is to coordinate, like an \"orchestra director\", the timing of muscular events, which follow each other both in the execution of the voluntary action and in the postural activities that accompany it.  
Considering the interesting observations carried out on inter-limb APAs in children with PCA (Section 5), it would be interesting to insert the missing piece of this puzzle: to investigate the intra-limb APA control in cerebellar children, in order to gain more information regarding the cerebellar ontogenesis in stabilizing and optimizing motor performance. In this context, it might be possible to test activities of postural muscles that stabilize the arm when the index finger is briskly flexed in children with pediatric cerebellar ataxia. If a timing disruption occurs, we might further confirm the essential function of the cerebellum in controlling the temporal relationships between muscular activities, but also verify its important role during human development. In this way, we could deepen the knowledge on the cerebellar contribution to postural control since human embryogenesis. Moreover, to deepen the knowledge regarding the neural areas, like basal ganglia, possibly involved in the compensatory role in children with cerebellar impairments, it would be interesting to study the connectivity of the brain networks through MRI. Indeed, recent methods of functional and diffusion  
Figure 3: Subcortical compensatory networks. (**a**) Reciprocal interconnections between cerebellum and basal ganglia have been described in healthy conditions [116; 117]. Panel (**b**) shows how the pathway from cerebellum to basal ganglia enhances its activity (thick black arrow) in [PERSON]’s disease, to compensate the basal ganglia deficit [123]. Symmetrically, in (**c**), it is proposed that the pathway from basal ganglia to cerebellum (thick red arrow) may allow the former to compensate for cerebellar deficits in ataxia.  
MRI are able to highlight the involvement of specific areas and to reconstruct the streams among these neural structures.  
The study of APAs in patients with cerebellar damage is not only crucial for understanding the essential functions of the cerebellum, but also for clinical monitoring. Indeed, the analysis of APAs during a motor task (from gait initiation to index-finger flexion) may be an additional tool to the established diagnostic methods for a complete clinical evaluation of cerebellar patients.  
Finally, a better knowledge of which neural structures actually compensate for the effects of cerebellar dysfunction could be of great help in therapy and rehabilitation, as it could suggest new targets for pharmacological and brain stimulation treatments, as well as for rehabilitation procedures. As a purely speculative example, if basal ganglia actually compensate for cerebellar dysfunction, it would then be important to test whether such compensation may overload and/or be detrimental for basal ganglia over time. If so, a pharmacological or brain stimulation approach similar to that used for PD patients might be envisaged.  
Conceptualization, P.C. and S.M.M.; writing--original draft preparation, S.M.M.; writing--review and editing, S.M.M., R.E., V.F., F.B., P.C.; funding acquisition, P.C. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This study was supported by Fondazione Mariani for Child Neurology.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.