PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jorge E. Ramirez
AU  - Brandon M. Stell
TI  - Calcium imaging reveals coordinated simple spike pauses in populations of Cerebellar Purkinje cells
AID  - 10.1101/051730
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 051730
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/04/051730.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/04/051730.full
AB  - The brain’s control of movement is thought to involve coordinated activity between cerebellar Purkinje cells. The results reported here demonstrate that somatic Ca2+ imaging is a faithful reporter of Na+-dependent “simple spike” pauses and enables us to optically record changes in firing rates in populations of Purkinje cells. This simultaneous calcium imaging of populations of Purkinje cells reveals a striking spatial organization of pauses in Purkinje cell activity between neighboring cells. The source of this organization is shown to be the presynaptic GABAergic network and blocking GABAARs abolishes the synchrony. These data suggest that presynaptic interneurons synchronize (in)activity between neighboring Purkinje cells and thereby maximize their effect on downstream targets in the deep cerebellar nuclei.