As an evidence-based journalist who follows newsworthy trends in neuroscience, I’ve been keeping an eye on the rising popularity of the cerebellum (Latin for “little brain”). In recent weeks, this often-overlooked subcortical brain region has skyrocketed to buzzword status. I have a hunch “cerebellum” might be on the verge of becoming a household word such as “amygdala,” “hippocampus,” and “prefrontal cortex” that have made the rare leap from the esoteric lexicon of neuroscience to everyday terminology.
For the past decade, I’ve been trying (without much success) to make the term “cerebellar” a household word by putting the importance of cerebrum-cerebellum interplay in the spotlight. In the list below, I present three key ingredients that I speculate may have created a tipping point which could result in our “little brain” becoming the next big thing in neuroscience.
Before diving into a simple deconstruction of how the cerebellum became a “hot” topic in the past few weeks, there’s an important caveat: This purposely short list of three factors that may be causing reportage on the cerebellum to surge is more an analysis of how media trends work in neuroscience than a comprehensive retrospective of cerebellar research.
The full article can be found here.
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