BOLK,LODEWIJK AND THE COMPARATIVE ANATOMY OF THE CEREBELLUM

The cerebellum of mammals is histologically uniform, but it varies gre atly in the relative size of its different parts. The Dutch anatomist Lodewijk Bolk studied a large series of mammalian cerebella, and put f orward a general scheme of organization that can be applied to all mam mals. Bolk also speculated about the functional role of different regi ons of the cerebellum, based on the idea that there might be a single somatotopically organized representation of the body surface on the ce rebellar cortex. Although his idea of a single map is wrong, Bolk's an atomical descriptions are thorough, and his insights are profound. The se descriptions formed the basis for much subsequent thinking about th e structure of the cerebellum.