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The Little Brain: How the Cerebellum Coordinates Speech and Movement · Professor Peterson’s Psychology Classroom

• 0:00
  Welcome to this edition of Psychology Explained by Dr.
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  Curtis Peterson, who is trying to bring psychology
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  alive for us all. What I want to
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  talk about in, in this part is
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  something that I've avoided talking about. If you
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  notice in the limbic system conversation and
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  in this conversation, there's this little thing, this,
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  this area right here that
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  is called the cerebellum, and it's connected
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  to the limbic system and to the cortical areas.
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  Uh, sometimes it's called the little brain.
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  And what I want to explain about this area of the
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  brain is it has largely to do with coordination.
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  Even if you look at the fibers within the cerebellum,
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  they tend to be very linear and connected.
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  Okay, and it has a lot to do
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  with coordination. It has a lot to do
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  with our ability to speak in a coherent way
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  because it coordinates our language centers.
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  It coordinates our movement. It coordinates
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  us being able to walk. And it's when we
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  see damage in this area that we start to see,
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  uh, speech impediments. We start to see,
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  uh, walking being more and more difficult.
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  And in this example, the best example
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  for this one is like old school Uh,
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  boxers. All right,
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  believe it or not, when you receive trauma to the
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  front of your brain, the area of the brain that is
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  most damaged is the back of your
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  brain. So again,
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  I'll bring this up. In a combat situation,
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  a person who has, uh,
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  let's say has had an explosion or
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  an injury or a blunt trauma to the front
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  often have visual and coordination
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  issues as their most predominant symptom.
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  Okay, and again, we can talk about this. If someone
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  has blunt force something to the back,
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  this— the frontal cortical areas tend
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  to get the most damage,
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  meaning impulse control, uh,
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  social issues,
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  identity issues tend to appear first.
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  Not, not to— not that they'll go blind
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  or anything like that. Okay, so let's talk
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  about the boxer because I want to explain the brain skull.
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  So yeah, we do have this cover that has
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  fluid in it that protects the brain,
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  but if we felt the interior of the skull of the brain,
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  it's not perfectly smooth. It is actually
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  kind of like an 80 to 120
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  grit sandpaper type of feel.
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  And what we see with old-school boxers is what happens
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  is that they get hit to the face or the head,
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  and the, the back of the skull starts
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  to scrape away the cerebellum
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  and starts to injure it. So if you look at when
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  they're older, Muhammad Ali Um,
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  uh, oh, we did the grill thing.
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  Um, oh, I can't remember the grill. Anybody remember
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  the grill? Um,
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  George Foreman. Thank you, Destry. Um, all of
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  them near the end, uh, when they stopped their career
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  They either had a speech impediment, or you would see them
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  with a cane because they had difficulty walking,
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  um, or something like that going on. And it's
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  because of the repeated hits to their head that
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  basically portions of their cerebellum became
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  sanded off after so many repeated hits to the
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  head. Mike Tyson is another good example.
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  If you listen to his speech after he was,
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  uh, done boxing and before, his speech
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  over time became more and more incoherent
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  over time. So that's what this little
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  guy is for. It helps us with coordinated language,
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  coordinated walking, stability,
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  and all of those things. Um, and so
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  I just wanted to mention that because I know we've been ignoring this guy,
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  but he is really important when we start talking about language
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  and motor coordination. Thank you for
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  joining us for this Psychology Explained. I hope
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  you'll join us in later episodes where we can— we'll continue
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  to investigate the human mind and psychology.