Forward predictions are not only crucial to predict somatosensory consequences of movements, but may also guide cross-modal sensory mapping (Ramnani, 2006).
For instance, it has been suggested [29] that the cerebellum incorporates a forward model that predicts the sensory consequences of movements.
This is because the exteroceptive (e.g. visual) consequences of movements are the same and all we have to do is to suppress the proprioceptive predictions.
This wasn't at all trivial and together with the off-axis/multijoint impairments of individual limbs, points to a specific lack of ability to predict the consequences of movements of other parts of the body.
These predictions can then be used to optimize joint angle combinations within a limb (Bastian et al., 1996), synchronize interlimb coordination, or to cancel out the unintended passive consequences of movements of other parts of the body.
It is thought the cerebellum contributes to fast and flexible motor control by predicting the sensory consequences of movements on a fine timescale, and that these predictions are available before visual or proprioceptive feedback from the executed actions [2,4].
We found that while on-axis paw kinematics are preserved in the absence of cerebellar cortical output, the ability to predict and actively cancel the passive consequences of movements of other parts of the body appears to be beyond the limits of compensatory mechanisms available to pcd mice.
Other work, particularly on reaching movements, the cerebellar-like nuclei of electric fish, and locomotor adaptation, has suggested that the cerebellum provides a forward model that predicts the consequences of movements (Bastian et al., 1996; Kennedy et al., 2014) (Pasalar et al., 2006) (Morton and Bastian, 2006).
