A PDF model of populations of Purkinje cells: Non-linear interactions and high variability

While the Marr/Albus cerebellar model expects Purkinje cells to behave linearly and have noise free outputs, physiological studies suggest otherwise. A cerebellar model based on ensembles of neurons encoding Probability Density Functions (PDF’s) described here may resolve these contradictions. Our simulations show that a PDF based model can describe the noisy output of these cells, and more importantly, efficiently compute the complex non-linear functions necessary for the cerebellar computations, such as for the control of arm movement (Bastian et al 1996). We further intend to simulate the computation of more complex functions using similar methods.