The Development of the Cerebellum: From the Beginnings

Sotelo stated in his introduction for a consensus paper on cerebellar development (Leto et al. Cerebellum 15:789, 2015) that “The work done in the late nineteenth century until the late 1970s provided substantial and significant information; however, it was only descriptive and barely addressed the mechanisms involved.” Observations and their description, the nomenclature that evolved from these studies and the ideas they fostered, indeed, formed the basis for our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the complex development of the cerebellum, to be reviewed in this volume. This chapter will highlight some of these early contributions to the origin of the cerebellum, its histogenesis, the migration of its neurons, the development of the longitudinal Purkinje cell zones, their target nuclei and their connections, and the folial pattern of the cerebellum.