title: The neuronal code(s) of the cerebellum.
abstract: Understanding how neurons encode information in sequences of action potentials is of fundamental importance to neuroscience. The cerebellum is widely recognized for its involvement in the coordination of movements, which requires muscle activation patterns to be controlled with millisecond precision. Understanding how cerebellar neurons accomplish such high temporal precision is critical to understanding cerebellar function. Inhibitory Purkinje cells, the only output neurons of the cerebellar cortex, and their postsynaptic target neurons in the cerebellar nuclei, fire action potentials at high, sustained frequencies, suggesting spike rate modulation as a possible code. Yet, millisecond precise spatiotemporal spike activity patterns in Purkinje cells and inferior olivary neurons have also been observed. These results and ongoing studies suggest that the neuronal code used by cerebellar neurons may span a wide time scale from millisecond precision to slow rate modulations, likely depending on the behavioral context.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee 38163, Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus MC, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1105 BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, Department of Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461, and Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado 80045.
authors.forename: Detlef H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Heck
authors.forename: Chris I
authors.initials: CI
authors.lastname: De Zeeuw
authors.forename: Dieter
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jaeger
authors.forename: Kamran
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Khodakhah
authors.forename: Abigail L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Person
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000502:physiology*; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D011689:Purkinje Cells / Q000502:physiology; D009435:Synaptic Transmission / Q000502:physiology*