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Force field effects on cerebellar Purkinje cell discharge with implications for internal models

Nature Neuroscience volume 9, pages 1404–1411 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

The cerebellum has been hypothesized to provide internal models for limb movement control. If the cerebellum is the site of an inverse dynamics model, then cerebellar neural activity should signal limb dynamics and be coupled to arm muscle activity. To address this, we recorded from 166 task-related Purkinje cells in two monkeys performing circular manual tracking under varying viscous and elastic loads. Hand forces and arm muscle activity increased with the load, and their spatial tuning differed markedly between the viscous and elastic fields. In contrast, the simple spike firing of 91.0% of the Purkinje cells was not significantly modulated by the force nor was their spatial tuning affected. For the 15 cells with a significant force effect, changes were small and isolated. These results do not support the hypothesis that Purkinje cells represent the output of an inverse dynamics model of the arm. Instead these neurons provide a kinematic representation of arm movements.

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Figure 1: Schematic of the circular tracking task and sample hand kinematics.
Figure 2: Force applied by the monkey, measured at the handle.
Figure 3: Example EMG data for two muscles.
Figure 4: Muscle population data.
Figure 5: Simple spike firing of two example Purkinje cells.
Figure 6: Population data for Purkinje cells.
Figure 7: Distribution of shifts in the position of maximal activity for the CCW versus CW direction across population of cells and muscles.
Figure 8: Modeling the simple-spike firing.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. McPhee for assistance with graphics and S. Allison for assistance with programming. This work was supported in part by the US National Institutes of Health (grant RO1-NS-18338) and a grant from the Minnesota Medical Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 55455, Minnesota, USA

    S Pasalar, A V Roitman & T J Ebner

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 55455, Minnesota, USA

    S Pasalar & W K Durfee

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  1. S Pasalar
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Contributions

S.P. and A.V.R. conducted the experiments and performed the analyses, and also participated in the design of the experiments. All authors contributed to discussions of the data and to writing the paper. T.J.E. was instrumental in the design of the experiments and supervised the project including experimentation, data analysis and writing.

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Correspondence to T J Ebner.

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Pasalar, S., Roitman, A., Durfee, W. et al. Force field effects on cerebellar Purkinje cell discharge with implications for internal models. Nat Neurosci 9, 1404–1411 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1783

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