Seminar:"The cerebellum modulates whisker related cerebral cortical activity"

Sensory and Behavioral Neuroscience Unit (Fukunaga Unit) would like to invite you to a seminar by Dr. Sander Lindeman from Erasmus Medical Center.

---------------------------

Date: Thursday, June 15, 2017

Time: 13:30 – 14:30

Venue: Meeting Room D014, Lab1

Speaker: Dr. Sander Lindeman

Title: The cerebellum modulates whisker related cerebral cortical activity

Abstract: 

Sensorimotor integration is one of the most fundamental surviving mechanisms across all mammalian species. The cerebellum plays a key role in this process. Despite the decades of research on this process, it has still to be elucidated with what functional mechanism the cerebellum influences the neocortical information processing. For my PhD-project, I combined optogenetic activation of cerebellar Purkinje cells (PCs) with whisker stimulation to investigate how the cerebellum affects event-related cerebral cortical activity. By activating PCs, which send inhibitory projections to the cerebellar nuclei, the cerebellar output is transiently disrupted. Using silicon probe recordings in the primary sensory (S1) and motor cortices (M1) in mice, I have shown that the disruption of the cerebellar output attenuates whisker input driven responses in S1 and M1, and modulates the S1-M1 coherence. Together, these results indicate a crucial role that is played by the cerebellum in the participation in the multi-regional cortical processing of information.

Sensory and Behavioral Neuroscience Unit

(Fukunaga Unit)