Summary
Impulses discharged by Purkyně cells provide the only output from the cerebellar cortex. Usually the Purkyně cells can be identified with certainty because they alone respond by the brief bursting discharge generated by climbing fiber (CF) impulses, as well as by the ubiquitous simple spikes. The discharges from single Purkyně cells in the anterior lobe have been studied in lightly anesthetized and in decerebrate unanesthetized cats. All of our 275 identified cells had an average background discharge frequency in the range of 5/sec to 100/sec. The discharge was increased and/or depressed by afferent volleys from a number of limb nerves. In addition there was usually a slow rate of CF-evoked spike bursts at 0.5–2/sec, and many afferent inputs also evoked CF responses.
The firing patterns of Purkyně cells are often very irregular, but by the technique of computer averaging of many sweeps, usually 128, the responses of the cell under observation have been accurately and reliably displayed as post-stimulus time histograms and their cumulative frequency distributions. In this manner the distinctive features of the responses evoked by the mossy fiber and climbing fiber inputs have been determined under a wide variety of conditions. The most direct mossy fiber responses — excitatory or inhibitory — had a shorter latency than the climbing fiber responses, usually by more than 10 msec. However, there were also later responses to both types of input.
Repetitive afferent volleys were used to study facilitation of the mossy fiber responses at short intervals, and the effectiveness of repetition on both kinds of inputs at slower frequencies. Repetitive mossy fiber inputs apparently can give a maintained enhancement or depression of the Purkyně cell discharge.
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Post-Doctoral Fellow NINDS (1F2NB40,544101 NSRB).
Post-Doctoral Fellow UHF Grant No. FTF-3-UB-70.
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Eccles, J.C., Faber, D.S., Murphy, J.T. et al. Afferent volleys in limb nerves influencing impulse discharges in cerebellar cortex II. In purkyně cells. Exp Brain Res 13, 36–53 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00236429
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00236429