Neuronal mechanisms of cerebellar associative learning

• Author(s): Silva, Neuza
• Date: 2022
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/143191
• Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
• Subject(s): Neuronal mechanisms; eyeblink; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Médicas
• Document Type: Doctoral thesis
• Language: English
• Advisor(s): Carey, Megan
• Contributor(s): RUN

Description

"Motor learning is a crucial process that is present throughout life, sincewe learn how to walk and talk. The cerebellum is essential for several forms of motor learning, including delay eyeblink conditioning. In this paradigm, animals learn to blink to an initially neutral conditioned stimulus, such as a light. Signals related to the light are conveyed to the cerebellum via mossy fibers that project onto granule cells and whose parallel fibers directly excite Purkinje cells, in the form of simple spikes. Signals related to the air puff unconditioned stimulus (which causes the blink) are conveyed to the cerebellum by climbing fibers, which provide strong synaptic inputs that elicit complex spikes in Purkinje cells. Simple spikes are thought to provide the cellular context for learning, whereas complex spikes are thought to provide cellular instructive signals for plasticity that is hypothesized to underlie many forms of cerebellar-dependent learning. (...)"