Ephaptic Coupling Promotes Synchronous Firing of Cerebellar Purkinje Cells.

ABSTRACT: Correlated neuronal activity at various timescales plays an important role in information transfer and processing. We find that in awake-behaving mice, an unexpectedly large fraction of neighboring Purkinje cells (PCs) exhibit sub-millisecond synchrony. Correlated firing usually arises from chemical or electrical synapses, but, surprisingly, neither is required to generate PC synchrony. We therefore assessed ephaptic coupling, a mechanism in which neurons communicate via extracellular electrical signals. In the neocortex, ephaptic signals from many neurons summate to entrain spiking on slow timescales, but extracellular signals from individual cells are thought to be too small to synchronize firing. Here we find that a single PC generates sufficiently large extracellular potentials to open

SUBMITTER: Han KS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7513896 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature