Synaptic diversity enables temporal coding of coincident multi-sensory inputs in single neurons

By F. Chabrol, A. Arenz, M. T. Wiechert, Troy W. Margrie, D. DiGregorio. 2015

189 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The ability of the brain to rapidly process information from multiple pathways is critical for reliable execution of complex sensory-motor behaviors, yet the cellular mechanisms underlying a neuronal representation of multimodal stimuli are poorly understood. Here we explored the possibility that the physiological diversity of mossy fiber (MF) to granule cell (GC) synapses in the mouse vestibulocerebellum may contribute to the processing of coincident multisensory information at the level of individual GCs. We found that the strength and short-term dynamics of individual MF-GC synapses can act as biophysical signatures for primary vestibular, secondary vestibular and visual input pathways. Most GCs receive inputs from different modalities, which, when coactivated, produced enhanced GC firing rates and distinct first spike latencies. Thus, pathway-specific synaptic response properties permit temporal coding of correlated multisensory inputs by single GCs, thereby enriching sensory representation and facilitating pattern separation.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Neurology, Sensory Systems

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Citations in the corpus

Re-evaluating circuit mechanisms underlying pattern separation (2019, neutral): “, 2014) has accumulated for mixed representations generated through multimodal integration in single granule cells of the cerebellar cortex (Arenz et al., 2008; Chabrol et al., 2015; Ishikawa et al., 2015).”
Morphological Constraints on Cerebellar Granule Cell Combinatorial Diversity (2017, background): “We therefore considered the idea that GrCs with redundant combinations of MFRs could fire at different times because of either GCL circuitry or synaptic diversity (Medina et al., 2000; Chabrol et al., 2015).”
Multimodal sensory integration in single cerebellar granule cells in vivo (2015, background): “, 2013) and in vitro electrophysiological (Chabrol et al., 2015) demonstration that single granule cells can receive mossy fibers of different origins (see also [Sawtell, 2010]).”
Population-scale organization of cerebellar granule neuron signaling during a visuomotor behavior (2017, background): “…facilitating learning (Marr, 1969; Albus, 1971; Sejnowski, 1977; Fujita, 1982; Dean and Porrill, 2008), and support for expansion recoding has been found in electric fish (Sawtell, 2010; Kennedy et al., 2014) and rodents (Huang et al., 2013; Chabrol et al., 2015; Ishikawa et al., 2015).”
Shared cortex-cerebellum dynamics in the execution and learning of a motor task (2019, unknown): “This basic, conserved anatomical feature is thought to allow the GrC layer to produce outputs highly distinct from those of cortex (Albus, 1971; Babadi and Sompolinsky, 2014; Billings et al., 2014; Cayco-Gajic et al., 2017; Chabrol et al., 2015; Litwin-Kumar et al., 2017; Marr, 1969).”
Excitatory Cerebellar Nucleocortical Circuit Provides Internal Amplification during Associative Conditioning (2016, unknown): “Applying repetitive current pulses up to 500 Hz at the nucleocortical rosettes resulted in reliable action potential firing (Figure 4D) with little adaptation in peak amplitudes, indicating that nucleocortical MFs can sustain reliable firing at extremely high frequencies, comparable to the high fide”
Optimal degrees of synaptic connectivity (2017, unknown): “However, within defined spatial domains, inputs to individual granule cells appear heterogeneous (Huang et al., 2013; Chabrol et al., 2015; Ishikawa et al., 2015), supporting a spatially restricted form of randomness.”