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Purkinje cells in awake behaving animals operate in stable upstate membrane potential

Nature Neuroscience volume 9, page 461 (2006)Cite this article

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Loewenstein et al. reply:

We reported1 that the membrane potential of Purkinje cells in vivo can exist in multiple stable states that correspond to firing and silent periods. Toggling between these states can be triggered by current injection or synaptic input, but the maintenance of the states is an intrinsic membrane property of these neurons1,2,3,4. Our experiments were done in rats and guinea pigs using ketamine-xylazine or barbiturate anesthesia, but similar behavior occurs in awake monkeys5,6,7, frogs8 and cats9,10,11. Schonewille et al. investigated Purkinje cell bistability in awake mice and concluded that membrane potential bistability is rare or absent in awake animals. However, in our view, their data is insufficient to support this conclusion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Yonatan Loewenstein

  2. Insitut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U667, Collège de France, Paris, F-75231, France

    Séverine Mahon

  3. Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research and Department of Physiology, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Paul Chadderton, Kazuo Kitamura & Michael Häusser

  4. Racah Institute of Physics and The Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Haim Sompolinsky

  5. Department of Neurobiology and The Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Yosef Yarom

Authors
  1. Yonatan Loewenstein
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  2. Séverine Mahon
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  7. Michael Häusser
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Loewenstein, Y., Mahon, S., Chadderton, P. et al. Purkinje cells in awake behaving animals operate in stable upstate membrane potential. Nat Neurosci 9, 461 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0406-461

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