PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Chiheng Ju AU - Laurens W.J. Bosman AU - Tycho M. Hoogland AU - Arthiha Velauthapillai AU - Pavithra Murugesan AU - Pascal Warnaar AU - Mario Negrello AU - Chris I. De Zeeuw TI - Neurons of the inferior olive respond to broad classes of sensory input while subject to homeostatic control AID - 10.1101/379149 DP - 2018 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 379149 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/11/06/379149.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/11/06/379149.full AB - Cerebellar Purkinje cells integrate sensory information with motor efference copies to adapt movements to behavioural and environmental requirements. They produce complex spikes that are triggered by the activity of climbing fibres originating in neurons of the inferior olive. These complex spikes can shape the onset, amplitude and direction of movements and the adaptation of such movements to sensory feedback. Clusters of nearby inferior olive neurons project to “microzones” which are parasagitally aligned stripes of Purkinje cells. Although it is known that sensory input preferentially recruits coherent climbing fibre activity within one or more microzones, it is still unclear whether individual Purkinje cells within a single microzone integrate climbing fibre input from multiple distinct sources, or how sensory-evoked responses depend on the stimulus strength and recent history of climbing fibre activity. By imaging complex spike responses in cerebellar lobule crus 1 to various types of sensory stimulation in awake mice we find that different sensory modalities and receptive fields have a mild, but consistent, tendency to converge on individual Purkinje cells. Purkinje cells encoding the same stimulus show increased complex spike coherence and tend to lie close together. Moreover, whereas complex spike firing is only mildly affected by variations in stimulus strength, it strongly depends on the recent history of climbing fibre activity. Our data point towards a mechanism in the olivo-cerebellar system that regulates complex spike firing during mono- or multisensory stimulation around a relatively low set-point, highlighting an integrative coding scheme of complex spike firing under homeostatic control. Purkinje cells in the cerebellum integrate input coming from the sensory organs with output generated by the motor control centres of the brain.Purkinje cells use sensory input to adapt motor control to the particularities of the direct surroundings of the animal.This study focused on one of the two main input pathways to Purkinje cells, the climbing fibres originating in the inferior olive, and asked whether they could convey mono- or multi-sensory information.We show that climbing fibres convey multiple types of sensory information and that they provide a mosaic projection pattern facilitating sensory integration in multiple combinations over the cerebellar cortex.Our results reveal that climbing fibres employ a coding pattern that underlies homeostatic control implying that their firing probability depends on their recent history of activity.