Abstract
Thiamine deficiency is associated with cerebellar dysfunction; however, the consequences of thiamine deficiency on the electrophysiological properties of cerebellar Purkinje cells are poorly understood. Here, we evaluated these parameters in brain slices containing cerebellar vermis. Adult mice were maintained for 12–13 days on a thiamine-free diet coupled with daily injections of pyrithiamine, an inhibitor of thiamine phosphorylation. Morphological analysis revealed a 20% reduction in Purkinje cell and nuclear volume in thiamine-deficient animals compared to feeding-matched controls, with no reduction in cell count. Under whole-cell current clamp, thiamine-deficient Purkinje cells required significantly less current injection to fire an action potential. This reduction in rheobase was not due to a change in voltage threshold. Rather, thiamine-deficient neurons presented significantly higher input resistance specifically in the voltage range just below threshold, which increases their sensitivity to current at these critical membrane potentials. In addition, thiamine deficiency caused a significant decrease in the amplitude of the action potential afterhyperpolarization, broadened the action potential, and decreased the current threshold for depolarization block. When thiamine-deficient animals were allowed to recover for 1 week on a normal diet, rheobase, threshold, action potential half-width, and depolarization block threshold were no longer different from controls. We conclude that thiamine deficiency causes significant but reversible changes to the electrophysiology properties of Purkinje cells prior to pathological morphological alterations or cell loss. Thus, the data obtained in the present study indicate that increased excitability of Purkinje cells may represent a leading indicator of cerebellar dysfunction caused by lack of thiamine.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Gabriel Henrique Campolina Silva, Samuel Tadeu Rocha, and CAPI-UFMG for assistance with imaging and image analysis and Rogério de Freitas Lacerda and Mariana Elena Jacobsen for assistance with developing the thiamine deficiency protocol in mice. We thank Court Hull and Jacques I Wadiche for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.
Funding
This study was funded by FAPEMIG (grant number APQ-02013-15) and CNPq (grant number 301798/2019-2) awarded to Christopher Kushmerick. Ivonne Carolina Bolaños-Burgos and Ana María Bernal Correa were funded by graduate student fellowships from CAPES-PROEX.
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Bolaños-Burgos, I.C., Bernal-Correa, A.M., Mahecha, G.A.B. et al. Thiamine Deficiency Increases Intrinsic Excitability of Mouse Cerebellar Purkinje Cells. Cerebellum 20, 186–202 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12311-020-01202-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12311-020-01202-x