Classical conditioning of the nictitating membrane response of the rabbit

Abstract

We report the connections of cerebellar cortical lobule HVI in the rabbit. We have studied the anterograde and retrograde transport of wheatgerm-agglutinated horseradish peroxidase (WGA-HRP) following its injection into HVI to reveal efferent and afferent connections. All of the cases showed strong anterograde transport to the anterior interpositus nucleus (AIP) - indicating that this is the major efferent target of HVI. Retrogradely labelled cells were found in the inferior olivary, spinal trigeminal, lateral reticular, inferior vestibular and pontine nuclei. Within the olive, the medial part of the rostral dorsal accessory olive (DAO) and the adjacent medial part of the principal olive (PO) were consistently labelled in all cases. This area is known to receive somatosensory information from the face and neck. There was no projection to the hemispheral part of lobule VI from visual parts of the olive within the dorsal cap and medial parts of the medial accessory olive. Likely sources of visual and auditory information to HVI are the dorsolateral basilar pontine nuclei and nucleus reticularis tegmenti pontis, which were densely labelled in all cases. These anatomical findings are consistent with the suggestion that, during NMR conditioning, information related to the periorbital shock unconditional stimulus (US) may be provided by climbing fibres to HVI and light and white noise conditional stimulus (CS) information may be supplied by pontine mossy fibres.

Timing in trace conditioning of the nictitating membrane response of the rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus): Scalar, nonscalar, and adaptive features

“…Specifically, US input to the cerebellum rises through the inferior olive and climbing fibers. Consistent with an error-correction rule, the US input is progressively inhibited by the output of the cerebellar cortex via deep nuclei to the inferior olive (Yeo et al 1986;Sears and Steinmetz 1991;Hesslow and Ivarsson 1996;Bengtsson and Hesslow 2006). In the present results, the negatively accelerated learning curves shown in Figure 1 are consistent with this errorcorrection process.…”

Cerebellum and emotional behavior

“…The crucial sites in the cerebellum for such learning are the lobule HVI (Yeo et al 1985a andYeo et al 1985b) and the interpositus nucleus (see for a review, Thompson and Steinmetz, 2009). Although most eye blink conditioning studies focus exclusively on the motor output of interest, subjects also learn about emotional aspects associated with the task (Lavond et al 1993 andLee andKim 2004).…”

Blockade of GABAA receptors in the interpositus nucleus modulates expression of conditioned excitation but not conditioned inhibition of the eyeblink response

“…The CS pathway includes mossy fiber projections from the pontine nuclei to the cerebellum (Gould, Sears, & Steinmetz, 1993;Lewis, LoTurco, & Solomon, 1987;Solomon, Lewis, LoTurco, Steinmetz, & Thompson, 1986;Steinmetz, Lavond, & Thompson, 1985;Steinmetz, Rosen, Chapman, Lavond, & Thompson, 1986;Steinmetz, Logan, Rosen, Thompson, Lavond, & Thompson, 1987;Steinmetz, Lavond & Thompson, 1989;Steinmetz, 1990;Tracy, Thompson, Krupa, & Thompson, 1998). The US pathway includes climbing fiber projections from the inferior olive to the cerebellum (De Zeeuw, Van Alphen, Hawkins, & Ruigrok, 1997;Gould et al, 1993;Mauk, Steinmetz & Thompson, 1986;McCormick, Steinmetz, & Thompson, 1985;Steinmetz et al, 1989;Yeo, Hardiman, & Glickstein, 1986). In the cerebellum, information about the CS and US is integrated at two levels, the Purkinje cells in the cerebellar cortex and the neurons in the deep nuclei.…”