The cerebellum as a liquid state machine

We examined closely the cerebellar circuit model that we have proposed previously. The model granular layer generates a finite but very long sequence of active neuron populations without recurrence, which is able to represent the passage of time. For all the possible binary patterns fed into mossy fibres, the circuit generates the same number of different sequences of active neuron populations. Model Purkinje cells that receive parallel fiber inputs from neurons in the granular layer learn to stop eliciting spikes at the timing instructed by the arrival of signals from the inferior olive. These functional roles of the granular layer and Purkinje cells are regarded as a liquid state generator and readout neurons, respectively. Thus, the cerebellum that has been considered to date as a biological counterpart of a perceptron is reinterpreted to be a liquid state machine that possesses powerful information processing capability more than a perceptron. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.