Research articleTemporal-spacial relationships between facial stimulation-evoked filed potential responses in mouse cerebellar granular layer and molecular layer
Introduction
The cerebellar cortex is organized into three layers: molecular layer (ML), Purkinje cell layer (PCL) and granule cell layer (GL), which is composed mainly of Purkinje cell (PC), granular cells (GC), molecular interneurons (MLIs) and Golgi cells [1]. The PCs are the focus of computation in the cerebellar cortex that receives converging projections from all other cortical neurons and provides the sole output from the cerebellar cortex to the deep cerebellar nuclei. GCs are the most commonly found neurons in the cerebellar cortex; they have the smallest cell somas and short dendrites [1,2]. Golgi cells are inhibitory interneurons of GCs, which are activated by mossy fibers and parallel fibers, and modulate excitatory synaptic transmission through mossy fiber-parallel fiber pathway by offering feed-back inhibition in local GCs [[1], [2], [3], [4]].
MLIs are divided into stellate-type and basket-type MLIs, which receive both excitatory and inhibitory inputs from parallel fibers and other interneurons, and provide GABAergic inhibition to the PCs [[5], [6], [7], [8]]. Stellate-type MILs have been suggested to provide dendritic inhibition and counterbalance parallel fiber excitatory inputs of PCs [9]. Basket-type MLIs offer powerful somatic inhibition of the PC soma and initial segment [8,10,11]. These MLIs exhibit small somas, high-input resistance with a low threshold for activation [12], and are connected with gap-junction, therefore, activating single parallel fiber inputs reliably evokes firing in a MLI, resulting in activation of a group of interneurons through the electric synapses [13,14].
There are two main types of excitatory afferents: the mossy fibers and the climbing fibers, which are considered to transfer the sensory information to cerebellar cortex. They information transferred to PC through the climbing fibers could activate the PCs by firing complex spikes, while the information carried by mossy fibers could excite PCs, MLIs and Golgi cells [5,[15], [16], [17]]. Electrical stimulus of the ML induces excitation followed by rapid activation of feedback inhibition [1,18] and feed forward inhibition in cerebellar PCs [7]. We previously found that sensory stimulation of trigeminal afferents primary induced GABAergic inhibition to PCs but evoked spike firing in both basket-type and stellate-type MLIs via mossy fiber-GC-parallel fiber pathway [19,20,17].
It is clear that during the facial sensory information transferred to cerebellar cortex via mossy fiber-GC-parallel fiber pathway, which induces a sequence of field potential responses in GL and ML. In GL, the sensory information evokes spike firing of GCs, and the action potentials of GCs flow along parallel fibers to excite MLIs, PCs and Golgi cells. Therefore, we assume that the facial information coming from parallel fibers would evoke a simultaneous excitation in MLIs and Golgi cells. For understanding whether the facial stimulation could evoke a simultaneous excitation in MLIs and Golgi cells, we here investigated the temporal-spacial relationships between the facial stimulation-evoked field potential responses in GL and ML, by electrophysiological recording technique and pharmacological methods.
Section snippets
Anesthesia and surgical procedures
Experimental procedures were approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of Yanbian University and were in accordance with the animal welfare guidelines of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The permit number is SYXK (Ji) 2011-006. Anesthesia and surgical procedures have been described previously [19]. Either male (n = 12) or female (n = 12) adult (6 to 8-week-old) HA/ICR mice were housed under a 12 h light: 12 h dark cycle with free access to food and water. They were anesthetized with
Due electrophysiological recordings showing the temporal-spacial properties of the facial stimulation-evoked field potential responses in mouse cerebellar GL and ML
For understanding the temporal-spacial properties of facial stimulation-evoked field potential responses in the GL and ML, we first examined the horizon-spacial temporal properties of the facial stimulation-evoked field potential responses in GL and different sites of same depth in ML (Fig. 1A). Under the current-clamp conditions (I = 0), duo-electrophysiological recordings showing that air-puff stimulation (60 ms, 60 psi) on the ipsilateral whisker pad evoked field potential responses in GL
Discussion
The main finding of this study is the facial stimulation evoked simultaneous inhibitory components in GL and ML regardless the relative recording sites. Application of AMPA receptor antagonist, NBQX completely blocked the inhibitory components in both ML and GL. Blocking GABA receptors abolished P1 in both ML and GL. Our results indicate that the facial stimulation evoked a simultaneous GABAergic inhibition in both ML and GL via mossy fiber-GC-parallel fiber pathway.
The cerebellar cortex is
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31460261, 31660272 and 31260245 and the international S & T cooperation program of China (2016YFE0128600).
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These authors contributed equally to this work.