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J Neurophysiol (June 14, 2006). doi:10.1152/jn.00335.2006
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Submitted on March 30, 2006
Accepted on June 10, 2006

PRECEREBELLAR HINDBRAIN NEURONS ENCODING EYE VELOCITY DURING VESTIBULAR AND OPTOKINETIC BEHAVIOR IN THE GOLDFISH

James C Beck1*, Paul Rothnie2, Hans Straka3, Susan L Wearne4, and Robert Baker1

1 Physiology & Neuroscience, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York, United States
2 The Center for Biomathematical Sciences, Mt Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, United States
3 CNRS, UMR 7060, Universite Paris 5, LNRS, Paris, France
4 The Center for Biomathematical Sciences, Mt Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, United States; Fishberg Department of Neuroscience, Mt Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, United States

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: james.beck{at}nyu.edu.

Elucidating the causal role of head and eye movement signaling during cerebellar-dependent oculomotor behavior and plasticity is contingent upon knowledge of precerebellar structure and function. To address this question, single-unit extracellular recordings were made from hindbrain Area II neurons that provide a major mossy fiber projection to the goldfish vestibulolateral cerebellum. During spontaneous behavior, Area II neurons exhibited minimal eye position and saccadic sensitivity. Sinusoidal visual and vestibular stimulation over a broad frequency range (0.1-4.0 Hz) demonstrated that firing rate mirrored the amplitude and phase of eye velocity or head velocity, respectively. Table frequencies >1.0 Hz resulted in decreased firing rate relative to eye velocity gain, while phase was unchanged. During visual steps, neuronal discharge paralleled eye velocity latency (~90 ms) and matched both the build-up and the time course of the decay (~19 s) in eye velocity storage. Latency of neuronal discharge to table steps (40 ms) was significantly longer than for eye movement (17 ms), but firing rate rose faster than eye velocity to steady state levels. The velocity sensitivity of Area II neurons was shown to equal (±10%) the sum of eye and head velocity firing rates as has been observed in cerebellar Purkinje cells. These results demonstrate that Area II neuronal firing closely emulates oculomotor performance. Conjoint signaling of head and eye velocity together with the termination pattern of each Area II neuron in the vestibulolateral lobe presents a unique eye velocity brainstem-cerebellar pathway, eliminating the conceptual requirement of motor error signaling.




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H. Straka, J. C. Beck, A. M. Pastor, and R. Baker
Morphology and Physiology of the Cerebellar Vestibulolateral Lobe Pathways Linked to Oculomotor Function in the Goldfish
J Neurophysiol, October 1, 2006; 96(4): 1963 - 1980.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]




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