Research report 2018 - Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience

Inhibition gates cerebellar computation, plasticity, and motor learning

Authors
Christie, Jason
Departments
Forschungsgruppe Mechanisms of Synaptic Signaling and Computation
Summary
Our unconscious ability to perform practiced movements with little effort is often attributed to “muscle memory”. Of course, our muscles don’t retain memories, our brains do. For motor control, a particular brain region called the cerebellum is important for encoding “muscle memories” during learning. Yet although the cerebellum receives a near constant barrage of neuronal signals, we recently discovered that learning does not occur continuously, but only under highly regulated circumstances. Key to this regulatory process is an inhibitory cell type called molecular layer interneurons (MLIs).

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