The cerebellum: An incomplete multilayer perceptron?

Experimental studies have demonstrated the involvement of the cerebellum in showing classical conditioning paradigms including acquisition, extinction, savings, and spontaneous recovery of the conditioned eyelid response in rabbits. A few experimental studies suggest that the cerebellum is also able to show negative patterning (exclusive or) given that a sufficiently large interval between the conditioned stimulus onset and the unconditioned stimulus onset is provided. In this study, we use a detailed simulation of the cerebellum to shed light on the mechanisms underlying the computation of the exclusive or function. The results suggest that the timing of the conditioned response and the computation of the negative patterning paradigm are mutually exclusive.