Cerebellar granule cells acquire a widespread predictive feedback signal during motor learning. Author Andrea Giovannucci, Aleksandra Badura, Ben Deverett, Farzaneh Najafi, Talmo Pereira, Zhenyu Gao, Ilker Ozden, Alexander Kloth, Eftychios Pnevmatikakis, Liam Paninski, Chris De Zeeuw, Javier Medina, Samuel Wang Publication Year 2017 Type Journal Article Abstract Cerebellar granule cells, which constitute half the brain's neurons, supply Purkinje cells with contextual information necessary for motor learning, but how they encode this information is unknown. Here we show, using two-photon microscopy to track neural activity over multiple days of cerebellum-dependent eyeblink conditioning in mice, that granule cell populations acquire a dense representation of the anticipatory eyelid movement. Initially, granule cells responded to neutral visual and somatosensory stimuli as well as periorbital airpuffs used for training. As learning progressed, two-thirds of monitored granule cells acquired a conditional response whose timing matched or preceded the learned eyelid movements. Granule cell activity covaried trial by trial to form a redundant code. Many granule cells were also active during movements of nearby body structures. Thus, a predictive signal about the upcoming movement is widely available at the input stage of the cerebellar cortex, as required by forward models of cerebellar control. Keywords Animals, Cerebellum, Mice, Feedback, Male, Learning, Neurons, Anticipation, Psychological, Mice, Transgenic, Conditioning, Classical Journal Nat Neurosci Volume 20 Issue 5 Pages 727-734 Date Published 2017 May ISSN Number 1546-1726 DOI 10.1038/nn.4531 Alternate Journal Nat Neurosci PMCID PMC5704905 PMID 28319608 PubMedPubMed CentralGoogle ScholarBibTeXEndNote X3 XML