It’s not you, it’s me: Corollary discharge in precerebellar nuclei of sleeping infant rats

Abstract

1In week-old rats, somatosensory input arises predominantly from stimuli in the external 2 environment or from sensory feedback associated with myoclonic twitches during active 3 (REM) sleep. A previous study of neural activity in cerebellar cortex raised the possibility 4 that the brainstem motor structures that produce twitches also send copies of motor 5 commands (or corollary discharge, CD) to the cerebellum. Here, by recording from two 6 precerebellar nuclei-the inferior olive and lateral reticular nucleus-we demonstrate that 7 CD does indeed accompany the production of twitches. Within both structures, the CD 8 signal comprises a surprisingly sharp activity peak within 10 ms of twitch onset. In the 9 inferior olive, this sharp peak is attributable to the opening of slow potassium channels. 10