Computational model of the cerebellum and the basal ganglia for interval timing learning

Abstract

In temporal information processing, both the cerebellum and the basal ganglia play essential roles. In particular, for interval timing learning, the cerebellum exhibits temporally localized activity around the onset of the unconditioned stimulus, whereas the basal ganglia represents the passage of time by their ramping-up activity from the onset of the conditioned stimulus to that of the unconditioned stimulus. We present a unified computational model of the cerebellum and the basal ganglia for the interval timing learning task. We report that our model reproduces the localized activity in the cerebellum and the gradual increase of the activity in the basal ganglia. These results suggest that the cerebellum and the basal ganglia play different roles in temporal information processing.