Single-unit activity of cerebellar nuclear cells in the awake genetically dystonic rat
Section snippets
Animals and surgery
Single-unit activity was recorded from the MCN, INT and LCN in awake normal (N=49) and dt (N=54; Jfl:SD-dt) rats between and including P12 and P26. Dystonic pups were obtained from a breeding colony of Sprague–Dawley rats maintained at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The 49 normal pups were the product of 26 dams. Twenty dams produced the 54 dt pups. All pups were housed with their dams until killing, and removed from their cages only for surgery and recording from the DCN. The animals
Results
Analysis of histological material revealed that recording sites were distributed throughout each cerebellar nucleus in both normal and dt rats. A representative spike train from a normal rat is presented in Fig. 1. The distinctive bursting patterns of DCN cells from dt rats at several postnatal ages is seen in Fig. 2Fig. 3Fig. 4Fig. 5. The spike trains from normal rats exhibited occasional bursts of variable duration; bursts of two spikes (doublets) are seen in Fig. 1. In contrast, the number
Discussion
Single-unit recordings from the MCN, INT and LCN in the awake dt rat support the conclusions of lesion studies by showing that the cerebellar output signal from each of the DCN is abnormal.10, 11, 12 In the awake preparation, DCN neuronal firing rates were not statistically different (α=0.05) between normal and dt rats. However, the pattern of firing was markedly different. DCN cells from dt rats showed frequent, short bursts of only two to five spikes. In addition, the short bursts of spikes
Conclusions
Single-unit recordings were obtained from the DCN in awake normal and dt rats from P12 to P26. Cells from dt rats demonstrated prominent rhythmic bursting activity that increased linearly with postnatal age. Functional neuropathology was detected in the DCN at the earliest stages of the dt rat movement disorder. There were no statistically significant differences in DCN spike frequency between normal and dt rats. These results are consistent with previous lesion studies which demonstrated a
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (K08 NS01593-01) and the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation.
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