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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Mar 1.
Published in final edited form as: Trends Neurosci. 2009 Jan 27;32(3):170–177. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2008.12.001

Figure 3.

Figure 3

Plasticity of EPSCs in cerebellar nuclear neurons. (a) Simplified diagram of the olivo-cerebellar circuit. Arrows indicate excitatory synapses; perpendiculars indicate inhibitory synapses. Broken line perpendicular from cf to pf indicates cf-dependent LTD of pf synapses. Broken arrow indicates relatively weak excitation of CbN by IO. Abbreviations: Pkj, Purkinje; CbN, cerebellar nuclei; IO, inferior olive; Grn, granule cell; mf, mossy fiber; pf, parallel fiber; cf, climbing fiber. (b) (i) Response to a stimulus protocol that induces LTP of mossy fiber EPSCs. A postsynaptic cerebellar nuclear neuron is current clamped and allowed to fire spontaneous action potentials. High-frequency stimulation of one set of mossy fiber afferents for 250 ms (EPSPs) is followed by a high-frequency stimulation of a separate set of afferents that are dominated by Purkinje axons (IPSPs). (ii) EPSCs (open symbols) recorded in the mossy fiber pathway every 15 s before and after the induction protocol was applied thirty times [at time 0; same cell as in part (i)]. Red symbols indicate averages of ten surrounding EPSCs. Inset: mean of ten EPSCs before the induction protocol (left) and after EPSCs have stabilized after induction (right). Data are from the same cell illustrated in Ref. [67], obtained with permission.