AI Article Synopsis
- Neural populations can transmit information either by changing firing rates or through timing of spikes.
- Research focused on Purkinje cell activity in the cerebellum of rhesus macaques, essential for smooth pursuit eye movements.
- Findings indicate that instead of relying on synchrony, the cerebellar cortex primarily uses firing rate changes to influence downstream neurons and motor control.
Article Abstract
Information transmission between neural populations could occur through either coordinated changes in firing rates or the precise transmission of spike timing. We investigate the code for information transmission from a part of the cerebellar cortex that is crucial for the accurate execution of a quantifiable motor behavior. Simultaneous recordings from Purkinje cell pairs in the cerebellum of rhesus macaques reveal how these cells coordinate their activity to drive smooth pursuit eye movements. Purkinje cells show millisecond-scale coordination of spikes (synchrony), but the level of synchrony is small and insufficient to impact the firing of downstream vestibular nucleus neurons. Analysis of previous metrics that purported to reveal Purkinje cell synchrony demonstrates that these metrics conflate changes in firing rate and neuron-neuron covariance. We conclude that the output of the cerebellar cortex uses primarily a rate rather than a synchrony code to drive the activity of downstream neurons and thus control motor behavior.
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Source |
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10424531 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2023.07.002 | DOI Listing |
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