Impact of Purkinje Cell Simple Spike Synchrony on Signal Transmission from Flocculus

Purkinje cells (PCs) in the cerebellar flocculus carry rate-coded information that ultimately drives eye movement. Floccular PCs lying nearby each other exhibit partial synchrony of their simple spikes (SS). Elsewhere in the cerebellum, PC SS synchrony has been demonstrated to influence activity of the PCs’ synaptic targets, and some suggest it constitutes another vector for information transfer. We investigated in the cerebellar flocculus the extent to which the rate code and PC synchrony interact. One motivation for the study was to explain the cerebellar deficits in ataxic mice like tottering ; we speculated that PC synchrony has a positive effect on rate code transmission that is lost in the mutants. Working in transgenic mice whose PCs express channelrhodopsin, we exploited a property of optogenetics to control PC synchrony: pulsed photostimulation engenders stimulus-locked spiking, whereas continuous photostimulation engenders spiking whose timing is unconstrained. We photoactivated flocculus PCs using pulsed stimuli with sinusoidally varying timing vs. continuous stimuli with sinusoidally varying intensity. Recordings of PC pairs confirmed that pulsed stimuli engendered greater PC synchrony. We quantified the efficiency of transmission of the evoked PC firing rate modulation from the amplitudes of firing rate modulation and eye movement. Rate code transmission was slightly poorer in the conditions that generated greater PC synchrony, arguing against our motivating speculation regarding the origin of ataxia in tottering . Floccular optogenetic stimulation prominently augmented a 250–300 Hz local field potential oscillation, and we demonstrate relationships between the oscillation power and the evoked PC synchrony.