PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Niceto R. Luque
AU  - Francisco Naveros
AU  - Eduardo Ros
AU  - Angelo Arleo
TI  - A computational model of homeostatic cerebellar compensation of ageing in vestibulo-ocular reflex adaptation
AID  - 10.1101/2020.08.03.233833
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.08.03.233833
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/08/04/2020.08.03.233833.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/08/04/2020.08.03.233833.full
AB  - The vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) stabilises vision during head motion. Age-related structural changes predict a linear VOR decay, whereas epidemiological data show a non-linear temporal profile. Here, we model cerebellar-dependent VOR adaptation to link structural and functional changes throughout ageing. We posit that three neurosynaptic factors codetermine VOR ageing patterns: electrical coupling between inferior olive neurons, intrinsic plasticity at Purkinje cell synapses, and long-term spike timing dependent plasticity at parallel fibre - Purkinje cell synapses as well as mossy fibre - medial vestibular nuclei synapses. Our cross-sectional simulations show that long-term plasticity acts as a global homeostatic mechanism mediating the non-linear temporal profile of VOR. Our results also suggest that intrinsic plasticity at Purkinje cells acts as a local homeostatic mechanism sustaining VOR at old ages. Importantly, longitudinal simulations show that residual fibres coding for the peak and trough of the VOR cycle constitute a predictive hallmark of VOR ageing trajectories.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.