Spatial anisotropy in the encoding of three-dimensional passive limb position by the spinocerebellum

In an earlier study, we found that the encoding of limb position in the sagittal plane across the population of spinocerebellar Purkinje cells was anisotropic with a preferential gradient along horizontal direction. The aim of this study was to extend to a three-dimensional (3D) workspace the analysis of the relationships between Purkinje cells activity and rat’s forelimb spatial position. In anesthetized animals, the extracellular activity of 121 neurons was recorded while a robot passively placed the limb in 18 positions within a cubic workspace (3×3×3 cm). In order to characterize the relationship between spatial locations and Purkinje cell activity we performed a backward stepwise regression starting from a model with three independent variables representing the antero-posterior, the medial–lateral and the vertical axes of workspace. Regression analysis showed that the firing of most cells was modulated exclusively along the antero-posterior (25%) or the medial–lateral (38%) axis, while a small portion was related only to the vertical axis (8%), indicating a generalized nonuniform sensitivity of Purkinje cells to limb displacement in 3D space.