The Cerebellum Magnified

	MAGNIFIED 4x	MAGNIFIED 10x	MAGNIFIED 20x
HUMAN			N/A
MONKEY
CAT			N/A
RAT
FROG

What do you notice about these pictures? Do they strike you as particularly similar or different? Perhaps with the exception of the frog cerebellum, you may notice that all of the photomicrographs look quite similar. At the low (4x) and medium (10x) magnifications, we see that the organization of the cerebellum looks very similar across all the animals. In addition, even at the highest (20x) magnification, the neurons are apparently quite similar in both the human, monkey, cat, rat, and frog.

A main difference you may have seen is that there are a few larger cells in the monkey cerebellum under high power which are not as obvious in other animals. These are called Purkinje cells (whose axons constitute the sole output from the cerebral cortex). In general, "higher" mammals tend to have more pronounced, distinct Purkinje cells than "lower" mammals. Do you notice that in these pictures? Click here to learn more about the neuron, or click one of the buttons below to continue magnifying parts of the brain.