The cerebellum linearly encodes whisker position during voluntary movement

  1. Susu Chen
  2. George J Augustine
  3. Paul Chadderton  Is a corresponding author
  1. Imperial College London, United Kingdom
  2. National University of Singapore, Singapore
  3. Imperial-NUS Joint PhD program
  4. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  5. Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore
5 figures and 2 videos

Figures

Figure 1 with 2 supplements
Alteration of Purkinje cell activity during free whisking.

(A) Videography of a head-restrained mouse with four traced whiskers (from row C, labeled in green). (B) Simplified diagram of the cerebellar circuit (cf: climbing fiber; gc: granule cell; PC: …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.003
Figure 1—figure supplement 1
Influence of locomotion on simple spike rate alteration during free whisking.

(A) The fraction of time from all recordings (n = 47) that mice were engaged in locomotion during whisking was very small. (B) Distribution of whisker positions during a single recording session …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.004
Figure 1—figure supplement 2
Complex spike rate alteration during free whisking.

(A) Relative CS firing rate changes during whisking with respect to non-whisking CS rates for all significantly modulated units (n = 33, Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test, p<0.05). Red and blue symbols …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.005
Figure 2 with 3 supplements
Purkinje cell simple spike discharges reliably track whisker movements.

(A) Whisker movements and corresponding simple spike raster from a single PC across 20 epochs of free whisking. Neuron demonstrates increased SS frequency during movement. (B) Peri-event time …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.008
Figure 2—figure supplement 1
Complex spike relationship to whisker movement.

CS peri-event time histograms (PETHs) overlaid with average whisker positions for the same cells shown in Figure 2. Note the absence of the close relationships between CS firing rate change and …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.009
Figure 2—figure supplement 2
Temporal relationship between whisker movement and SS firing rate for strongly and weakly modulated PCs.

(A) Cross-correlation between whisker position and SS discharge for individual whisking bouts (gray lines) of a strongly modulated PC. Gray circles: time of peak correlation for individual bouts. …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.010
Figure 2—figure supplement 3
Relationship between SS firing rate and whisking offset.

Normalized cross-correlations measured at whisking onset (solid lines) and offset (dashed lines) for example PCs shown in Figure 2. The temporal relationship between whisking and SS modulation is …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.011
Figure 3 with 2 supplements
Purkinje cell simple spike frequency linearly encodes whisker position.

(A) Relationship between SS rate and whisker position for PC with strong linear tuning in the forward direction only (unidirectional PC). Linear regression was performed for whisker positions …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.012
Figure 3—figure supplement 1
Linear encoding range of individual PCs.

(A) Relationship between whisker encoding range and PC gain. A strong inverse relationship was observed between linear encoding range and gain of SS modulation, indicating that high gain neurons …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.013
Figure 3—figure supplement 2
Inactivation of contralateral motor cortex does not degrade cerebellar representation of whisker position.

(A) PC recordings in Crus I were performed during transient inactivation of contralateral motor cortex (M1; via local muscimol injection, see ‘Materials and methods’). (B) Relative SS firing rate …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.014
Most Purkinje cells do not encode the phase of whisking cycle.

(A) Example of rhythmic whisker movement (green trace), and corresponding phase (orange) derived from the Hilbert transform of the raw position trace. (B) Modulation depth of phase tuning for …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.015
Reconstruction of set point trajectories from simple spike activity of single Purkinje cells.

(A) Reconstruction of whisker movement from single PC SS train based on the calculated transfer function. Whisker set point information (purple) is accurately reconstructed (black trace, bottom) …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.016

Videos

Video 1
Increased simple spike activity during whisking.

SS activity of a single PC during 15 s of voluntary whisking behavior. Left: Movements of the ipsilateral whisker pad were recorded via high-speed infrared videography. Top: changes in whisker angle …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.006
Video 2
Reduced simple spike activity during whisking.

SS activity of a single PC during 10 s of voluntary whisking behavior. Left: Movements of the ipsilateral whisker pad were recorded via high-speed infrared videography. Top: Fluctuations in the …

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10509.007

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