Cerebellar involvement in supra-second time prediction

Neural circuits process temporal intervals during adaptive behaviour. However, it is unclear how temporal information enables the brain to create causal maps and predict future events. While the cerebellum is well-known to support sub-second intervals for motor control, the ability to track environmental changes in the range of seconds to minutes is thought to be supported mostly by cerebral areas. We hypothesized that the cerebellum also contributes to behavioural control on a supra-second timescale by interacting with the neocortex through cerebro-cerebellar loops. Using a supra-second time estimation task and inhibitory chemogenetics we show that rats with cerebellar impairment underestimate time, suggesting that cerebellar contributions to time processing are not restricted to short sub-second intervals. Next, we trained a cerebro-cerebellar computational model on the same task. The model captures our behavioural findings while making predictions for how the cerebellum drives cerebral dynamics for successful time estimation. Taken together, our results suggest that the cerebellum supports adaptive behaviour over a wide range of temporal intervals.