Analysis of cerebellar flocculus Purkinje cell firing patterns during visual vestibular interactions before and in the process of VOR motor learning

Abstract

The vestibulo ocular reflex (VOR) stabilizes vision during head rotation by counter-rotating the eyes. The VOR has been extensively used to investigate sensory-motor transformations and motor learning. Cerebellar flocculus (FL) has been known to be involved in the VOR motor control and learning since its output, Purkinje cell firing pattern modulates during visual-vestibular interaction paradigms that induce the motor learning. Currently we investigated the FL Purkinje cell firing patterns in relation to eye movements before and after the VOR motor learning to evaluate a role of FL in different paradigms and in the learning. We show that 1) their firing patterns can be reconstructed by a linear combination of eye position, velocity and acceleration during VOR, optokinetic response (OKR) and various visual vestibular interactions, and 2) coefficients of these three terms change depending on the paradigms and the stage of the VOR motor learning.