bims-climfi 2019-05-19 papers

Issue of 2019‒05‒19
two papers selected by
Jun Maruta
Mount Sinai Health System

Elife. 2019 May 13. pii: e41586. [Epub ahead of print]8

Short-term plasticity at cerebellar granule cell to molecular layer interneuron synapses expands information processing.

Dorgans K, Demais V, Bailly Y, Poulain B, Isope P, Doussau F.

Information processing by cerebellar molecular layer interneurons (MLIs) plays a crucial role in motor behavior. MLI recruitment is tightly controlled by the profile of short-term plasticity (STP) at granule cell (GC)-MLI synapses. While GCs are the most numerous neurons in the brain, STP diversity at GC-MLI synapses is poorly documented. Here, we studied how single MLIs are recruited by their distinct GC inputs during burst firing. Using slice recordings at individual GC-MLI synapses of mice, we revealed four classes of connections segregated by their STP profile. Each class differentially drives MLI recruitment. We show that GC synaptic diversity is underlain by heterogeneous expression of synapsin II, a key actor of STP and that GC terminals devoid of synapsin II are associated with slow MLI recruitment. Our study reveals that molecular, structural and functional diversity across GC terminals provides a mechanism to expand the coding range of MLIs.

Keywords: mouse; neuroscience

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.41586

Sci Rep. 2019 May 14. 9(1): 7353

mGluR1 in cerebellar Purkinje cells is essential for the formation but not expression of associative eyeblink memory.

Nakao H, Kishimoto Y, Hashimoto K, Kitamura K, Yamasaki M, Nakao K, Watanabe M, Kano M, Kirino Y, Aiba A.

Classical eyeblink conditioning is a representative associative motor learning that requires both the cerebellar cortex and the deep cerebellar nucleus (DCN). Metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 1 (mGluR1) is richly expressed in Purkinje cells (PCs) of the cerebellar cortex. Global mGluR1 knock-out (KO) mice show a significantly lower percentage of conditioned response (CR%) than wild-type mice in eyeblink conditioning, and the impaired CR% is restored by the introduction of mGluR1 in PCs. However, the specific roles of mGluR1 in major memory processes, including formation, storage and expression have not yet been defined. We thus examined the role of mGluR1 in these processes of eyeblink conditioning, using mGluR1 conditional KO (cKO) mice harboring a selective and reversible expression of mGluR1 in PCs. We have found that eyeblink memory is not latently formed in the absence of mGluR1 in adult mouse PCs. However, once acquired, eyeblink memory is expressed even after the depletion of mGluR1 in PCs. We thus conclude that mGluR1 in PCs is indispensable for the formation of eyeblink memory, while it is not required for the expression of CR.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43744-z