bims-climfi 2023-05-28 papers

Issue of 2023–05–28
two papers selected by
Jun Maruta, Mount Sinai Health System

Biomedicines. 2023 May 18. pii: 1475. [Epub ahead of print]11(5):

Anisotropy and Frequency Dependence of Signal Propagation in the Cerebellar Circuit Revealed by High-Density Multielectrode Array Recordings.

Anita Monteverdi, Danila Di Domenico, Egidio D'Angelo, Lisa Mapelli.

The cerebellum is one of the most connected structures of the central nervous system and receives inputs over an extended frequency range. Nevertheless, the frequency dependence of cerebellar cortical processing remains elusive. In this work, we characterized cerebellar cortex responsiveness to mossy fibers activation at different frequencies and reconstructed the spread of activity in the sagittal and coronal planes of acute mouse cerebellar slices using a high-throughput high-density multielectrode array (HD-MEA). The enhanced spatiotemporal resolution of HD-MEA revealed the frequency dependence and spatial anisotropy of cerebellar activation. Mossy fiber inputs reached the Purkinje cell layer even at the lowest frequencies, but the efficiency of transmission increased at higher frequencies. These properties, which are likely to descend from the topographic organization of local inhibition, intrinsic electroresponsiveness, and short-term synaptic plasticity, are critical elements that have to be taken into consideration to define the computational properties of the cerebellar cortex and its pathological alterations.

Keywords: Purkinje cells; cerebellum; electrophysiology; granule cells; multielectrode arrays

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines11051475

Biomedicines. 2023 Apr 27. pii: 1298. [Epub ahead of print]11(5):

Differential Modulation of Cerebellar Flocculus Unipolar Brush Cells during Vestibular Compensation.

Dan Liu, Jun Wang, Liuqing Zhou, E Tian, Jingyu Chen, Weijia Kong, Yisheng Lu, Sulin Zhang.

Vestibular compensation is a natural behavioral recovery process following unilateral vestibular injury. Understanding the mechanism can considerably enhance vestibular disorder therapy and advance the adult central nervous system functional plasticity study after injury. The cerebellum, particularly the flocculonodular lobe, tightly modulates the vestibular nucleus, the center for vestibular compensation; however, it is still unclear if the flocculus on both sides is involved in vestibular compensation. Here we report that the unipolar brush cells (UBCs) in the flocculus are modulated by unilateral labyrinthectomy (UL). UBCs are excitatory interneurons targeting granule cells to provide feedforward innervation to the Purkinje cells, the primary output neurons in the cerebellum. According to the upregulated or downregulated response to the mossy fiber glutamatergic input, UBC can be classified into ON and OFF forms of UBCs. Furthermore, we discovered that the expression of marker genes of ON and OFF UBCs, mGluR1α and calretinin, was increased and decreased, respectively, only in ipsilateral flocculus 4-8 h after UL. According to further immunostaining studies, the number of ON and OFF UBCs was not altered during UL, demonstrating that the shift in marker gene expression level in the flocculus was not caused by the transformation of cell types between UBCs and non-UBCs. These findings imply the importance of ipsilateral flocculus UBCs in the acute response of UL, and ON and OFF UBCs may be involved in vestibular compensation in opposite directions.

Keywords: unilateral labyrinthectomy; unipolar brush cells; vestibular compensation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines11051298