Neural representations of active whisking in the cerebellum
File(s)
Author(s)
Chen, Susu
Type
Thesis
Abstract
Active whisking is an important model sensorimotor behavior, but the function of the cerebellum in the rodent whisker system is unknown. I have made patch clamp recordings from Purkinje cells, granule cells and interneurons in vivo to identify whether and how cerebellar activity encodes kinematic features of whisking including the phase and set point. I show that Purkinje cell spiking activity changes strongly during whisking bouts. On average, the changes in simple spike rate coincide with or slightly precede movement, indicating that the synaptic drive responsible for these changes is predominantly of efferent (motor) rather than re-afferent (sensory) origin. Remarkably, on-going changes in simple spike rate provide an accurate linear read-out of whisker set point. Thus, despite receiving several hundred thousand discrete synaptic inputs across a non-linear dendritic tree, Purkinje cells integrate parallel fiber and interneuron input to generate precise information about whisking kinematics via linear changes in firing rate. In addition, I demonstrate that evidence is consistent in both granule cells and interneurons activity within the circuit, providing a linear encoding regime of whisker set point.
Version
Open Access
Date Issued
2015-08
Date Awarded
2016-05
Copyright Statement
Attribution NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-ND)
Advisor
Chadderton, Paul
Augustine Jr, George
Sponsor
Medical Research Council (Great Britain)
National University of Singapore
Grant Number
G1000512
Publisher Department
Bioengineering
Publisher Institution
Imperial College London
Qualification Level
Doctoral
Qualification Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)