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A simple cerebellar system: The lateral line lobe of the goldfish

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Summary

  1. 1.

    The lateral line lobe consists of two structures, a layer of cerebellar material, the crista cerebelli overlying the medullary gray. Field potentials and single cell recordings made after stimulating the lateral line nerve and the caudal lobe of the cerebellum show that the primitive Purkinje cells (pP cells) of the crista can be excited by stimulating the large parallel fibre input running from the caudal lobe and (some cells) by stimulating the lateral line nerve. The parallel fibres do not appear to be involved in these latter responses and their role is unknown.

  2. 2.

    Apart from the extrinsic origin of the parallel fibres the crista cerebelli also differs from the cerebellum by having no identifiable climbing fibres. Stellate cell inhibition however appears to be present.

  3. 3.

    The small secondary lateral line cells in the gray layer receive punctate primary afferent inputs from one lateral line organ and a diffuse polysynaptic inhibitory input which can be seen as ipsps evoked in anterior lateral line gray cells by posterior lateral line nerve stimulation.

  4. 4.

    The lateral line inputs to the pP cells are highly variable and, in contrast to the gray cells pP cells show diffuse receptive fields when tested with “natural” stimuli.

  5. 5.

    Stimulation of the pP cells inhibits the gray cells and it seems that they are responsible for the inhibitory effect noted in (3).

  6. 6.

    It is suggested that pP cells with diffuse receptive fields inhibiting gray cells with punctate receptive fields could form a sensory lateral inhibition mechanism in the lateral line lobe.

  7. 7.

    When the responses of primary fibres in the lateral line nerve and secondary lateral line gray cells to measured physiological stimuli (water displacements at 30 Hz) are compared such a lateral inhibition seems to be present in the lateral line lobe. Secondary gray cells have response attenuation curves of 6–17 dB/cm as the stimulating probe is moved away from the units receptive field. The primary fibres show symmetrical curves with slopes of 4–6 dB/cm which corresponds to the calculated stimulus attenuation.

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Abbreviations

alln:

anterior lateral line nerves

co:

commissure

crista:

crista cerebelli

ext gran:

external granule cell layer of the caudal lobe of the corpus cerebelli

gran:

granule cell layer of the corpus cerebelli

gray:

medullary gray of Pearson

mc:

Mauthner cell

mlf:

medial longitudinal fasciculus

mol:

molecular layer of corpus cerebelli

pl:

plexus of axons at the dorsal limit of the gray

plln:

posterior lateral line nerve

pP cells:

primitive Purkinje cells

2 gust:

ascending secondary gustatory tract

IV:

fourth ventricle

VII:

descending root of nerve VII

VIII:

nerve VIII

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Author notes

  1. D. M. Caird

    Present address: Laboratoire de Physiologie Nerveuse, Département de Neurophysiologie Sensorielle, CNRS, F-91190, Gif sur Yvette, France

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ethology and Neurophysiology Group, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, Sussex, England

    D. M. Caird

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Additional information

This work was supported by a Science Research Council Research Studentship and a Royal Society European Exchange Programme Fellowship. I would like to thank Dr. I.J. Russell for his help and advice throughout this study and Dr. T. Szabo for the invitation to join his group at Gif sur Yvette. Some of the work reported here was submitted to the University of Sussex as partial fulfilment for the requirements of a DPhil degree.

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Caird, D.M. A simple cerebellar system: The lateral line lobe of the goldfish. J. Comp. Physiol. 127, 61–74 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00611926

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