The cerebellum hasn’t gotten much love from brain scientists historically, but neurobiologists today are discovering how it works to control motor functions, and how problems in that brain region cause movement disorders.

Research by ⁠Meike van der Heijden⁠, neurobiologist and assistant professor at the ⁠Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC⁠, has found that disorders like dystonia and tremors are connected to changes in how nerve cells in the cerebellum communicate.

Van der Heijden says the key to understanding what goes wrong in the cerebellum might lie in understanding normal development in children.

“If we understand what is the timeline of that normal development,” she asked, “can we kind of use that to back engineer treatments … in adulthood.”