Parallel fibre stimulation and the responses induced thereby in the Purkinje cells of the cerebellum.

Abstract

1. When electrical stimuli were applied to the surface of a cerebellar folium by a local electrode (LOC), there was a propagated potential wave along the folium with a triphasic (positive-negative-positive) configuration. 2. Investigations by microelectrode recording established that this wave is produced by impulses propagating for at least 3 mm and at about 0.3 m/sec along a narrow superficial band or “beam” of parallel fibres. As expected from this interpretation, there was an absolutely refractory period of less than 1 msec and impulse annihilation by collision. 3. Complications occurred from the potential wave forms resulting from the excitation of mossy fibres by spreading of the applied LOC stimulus. These complications have been eliminated by chronically deafferenting the cerebellum. 4. When recording within the beam of excited parallel fibres there was a slow negative wave of about 20 msec duration, and deep and lateral thereto, there was a slow positive wave of approximately the same time course. 5. These potential fields were expressed in serial profile plots and in potential contour diagrams and shown to be explicable by the excitatory and inhibitory synaptic action on Purkinje cells: excitatory depolarizing synapses of parallel fibre impulses on the dendrites; and hyperpolarizing inhibitory synapses of stellate and basket cells respectively on the dendrites and somata. The active excitatory synapses would be strictly on the parallel fibre beam and the inhibitory concentrated deep and lateral thereto, which is in conformity with the axonal distributions of those basket and stellate cells that would be excited by the parallel fibre beam. 6. Complex problems were involved in interpretation of slow potentials produced by a second LOC stimulus at brief stimulus intervals and up to 50 msec: there was a potentiation of the slow negative wave, and often depression of the positive wave deep and lateral to the excited beam of parallel fibres. 7. Often the LOC stimulus evoked impulse discharge from the Purkinje cells, these discharges being inhibited by a preceding LOC stimulus.