Cerebellar granule cells acquire a widespread predictive feedback signal during motor learning

By A. Giovannucci, Aleksandra Badura, B. Deverett, Farzaneh Najafi, Talmo D. Pereira, Zhenyu Gao, Ilker Ozden, A. Kloth, Eftychios A. Pnevmatikakis, Liam Paninski and 3 more. 2017

212 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Cerebellar granule cells, which constitute half the brain's neurons, supply Purkinje cells with contextual information necessary for motor learning, but how they encode this information is unknown. Here we show, using two-photon microscopy to track neural activity over multiple days of cerebellum-dependent eyeblink conditioning in mice, that granule cell populations acquire a dense representation of the anticipatory eyelid movement. Initially, granule cells responded to neutral visual and somatosensory stimuli as well as periorbital airpuffs used for training. As learning progressed, two-thirds of monitored granule cells acquired a conditional response whose timing matched or preceded the learned eyelid movements. Granule cell activity covaried trial by trial to form a redundant code. Many granule cells were also active during movements of nearby body structures. Thus, a predictive signal about the upcoming movement is widely available at the input stage of the cerebellar cortex, as required by forward models of cerebellar control.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Neurology, Ophthalmology

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

1. N. A. Cayco-Gajic
2. R. Silver
3. Abigail L. Person
4. J. Gilmer

In Neurology

1. N. A. Cayco-Gajic
2. R. Silver
3. J. Gilmer
4. Abigail L. Person

In Ophthalmology

1. Abigail L. Person
2. J. Gilmer
3. N. A. Cayco-Gajic
4. R. Silver

Citations in the corpus

• Re-evaluating circuit mechanisms underlying pattern separation (2019, positive): “Using this approach (or a related approach using a synthetic calcium indicator), several recent studies have reported that granule cell population activity is far denser than had previously been believed, with more than two thirds of imaged granule cells being active concurrently in some cases (Figu”
• Morphological Constraints on Cerebellar Granule Cell Combinatorial Diversity (2017, background): “In both mice and fish, between 20% and 80% of monitored GrCs could be active within a short epoch, far 1% predicted (Giovannucci et al., 2017; Knogler et al., 2017; Wagner et al., 2017).”
• Shared cortex-cerebellum dynamics in the execution and learning of a motor task (2019, unknown): “Due to Ca indicator kinetics, the GCaMP6f transients in our imaging data likely correspond primarily to multiple spikes (Chen et al., 2013; Giovannucci et al., 2017) (STAR Methods).”