Motor context dominates output from Purkinje cell functional regions during reflexive visuomotor behaviours
Abstract
The cerebellum integrates sensory stimuli and motor actions to enable smooth coordination and motor learning. Here we harness the innate behavioral repertoire of the larval zebrafish to characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics of feature coding across the entire Purkinje cell population during visual stimuli and the reflexive behaviors that they elicit. Population imaging reveals three spatially-clustered regions of Purkinje cell activity along the rostrocaudal axis. Complementary single-cell electrophysiological recordings assign these Purkinje cells to one of three functional phenotypes that encode a specific visual, and not motor, signal via complex spikes. In contrast, simple spike output of most Purkinje cells is strongly driven by motor-related tail and eye signals. Interactions between complex and simple spikes show heterogeneous modulation patterns across different Purkinje cells, which become temporally restricted during swimming episodes. Our findings reveal how sensorimotor information is encoded by individual Purkinje cells and organized into behavioral modules across the entire cerebellum.
Data availability
Example electrophysiological datasets are available at https://zenodo.org/record/1494071. An example imaging dataset is available at https://zenodo.org/record/1638807. MATLAB code for electrophysiological analysis available via GitHub (https://github.com/portugueslab/Knogler_etal_2019_eLife
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
- Laura D Knogler
Carl von Siemens Foundation
- Laura D Knogler
Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Santé
- Laura D Knogler
Max Planck Gesellschaft (Open-access funding)
- Laura D Knogler
- Andreas M Kist
- Ruben Portugues
International Max Planck Research School for Life Sciences
- Andreas M Kist
Joachim Herz Stiftung
- Andreas M Kist
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (PO 2105/2-1)
- Laura D Knogler
- Andreas M Kist
- Ruben Portugues
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Indira M Raman, Northwestern University, United States
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All procedures involving animals were in accordance with the Max Planck Society guidelines and approved by the Regierung von Oberbayern (TVA# 55-2-1-54-2532-82-2016)
Version history
- Received: September 18, 2018
- Accepted: December 26, 2018
- Accepted Manuscript published: January 25, 2019 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: February 13, 2019 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2019, Knogler et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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