Abstract
Cerebellar functioning has been implied in
the fine adjustments of muscle tone, in the
coordination and the feed-forward control of
movements and posture, as well as in the
establishment and performance of motor skills.
The cerebellar cortex in mammals develops late
in neuro-ontogeny and an extrapolation from
experimental results indicates that in the
human the proliferation of the granule cells and
the development of circuitry in the cerebellar
cortex starts only in the last trimester of
pregnancy and lasts until beyond the first
birthday. This late development makes the
cerebellar development particularly vulnerable
to situations like an insufficient supply of
nutrients, which may follow placental dysfunction,
or to side effects of pharmacological
treatments like the administration of corticosteroids
in the postnatal period. We studied
whether such situations might also lead to
motor impairments. In rats, the effects of
undernutrition during the brain growth spurt
were investigated as well as those of
corticosteroids administered in a period that is
analogous to the