The cerebellum is essential for
sensorimotor coordination. Cerebellar cortex needs to integrate large
amounts of data via the mossy fiber - parallel fiber pathway,
modulating the simple spike activity of its sole output neuron, the
Purkinje cell (Thach
1968). One mechanism
that may structure these incoming data streams are the complex
spikes, which are large action potentials triggered by the other
prominent cerebellar pathway, the climbing fiber input from the
inferior olive (Eccles
et al. 1966). Complex
spike firing can act as a conductor for orchestrating simple spike
activity across the cerebellar cortex, which is paramount for
downstream processing at the cerebellar nuclei (Person
& Raman 2012; Atkins & Apps 1997; Apps & Hawkes 2009).
Recent results show that phase of simple spike firing is indeed
shaped by complex spike firing (Badura
et al. 2013). In order
for a large number of inputs from the Purkinje cell to optimally
control CN firing, it has been suggested that the spatiotemporal
pattern of complex spike activity of ensembles of Purkinje cells is
important for both online control of movements (Welsh
et al. 1995; De Zeeuw et al. 2011)
as well as motor learning (Van
Der Giessen et al. 2008).