Abstract
The brain's control of movement is thought to involve coordinated activity between cerebellar Purkinje cells. The results reported here demonstrate that somatic calcium imaging is a faithful reporter of sodium-dependent "simple spike" pauses and enables us to optically record changes in firing rates in populations of Purkinje cells. This simultaneous calcium imaging of populations of Purkinje cells reveals a striking spatial organization of pauses in Purkinje cell activity between neighboring cells. The source of this organization is shown to be the presynaptic GABAergic network and blocking GABA-A receptors abolishes the synchrony. These data suggest that presynaptic interneurons synchronize (in)activity between neighboring Purkinje cells and thereby maximize their effect on downstream targets in the deep cerebellar nuclei.
