SCIENCE@home

Cerebellar re-encoding of self-generated head movements

G. Dugué,Matthieu Tihy,B. Gourévitch,C. Léna

Published 2017 in bioRxiv

ABSTRACT

Head movements are primarily sensed in a reference frame tied to the head, yet they are used to calculate self-orientation relative to the world. This requires to re-encode head kinematic signals into a reference frame anchored to earth-centered landmarks such as gravity, through computations whose neuronal substrate remains to be determined. Here, we studied the encoding of self-generated head movements in the caudal cerebellar vermis, an area essential for graviceptive functions. We found that, contrarily to peripheral vestibular inputs, most Purkinje cells exhibited a mixed sensitivity to head rotational and gravitational information and were differentially modulated by active and passive movements. In a subpopulation of cells, this mixed sensitivity underlay a tuning to rotations about an axis defined relative to gravity. Therefore, we show that the caudal vermis hosts a re-encoded, gravitationally-polarized representation of self-generated head kinematics.

PUBLICATION RECORD

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-82 of 82 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-32 of 32 citing papers · Page 1 of 1