The relationship between birth timing, circuit wiring, and physiological response properties of cerebellar granule cells
S. Andrew Shuster, Mark J. Wagner, Nathan Pan-Doh, Jing Ren, Sophie M. Grutzner, Kevin T. Beier, Tony Hyun Kim, Mark J. Schnitzer, Liqun Luo
Abstract
Significance Cerebellar granule cells (GrCs) comprise the majority of all neurons in the mammalian brain and are usually regarded as a uniform cell type. However, the birth timing of individual GrCs dictates where their axons project. Using viral-genetic techniques, we find that early- and late-born GrCs receive different proportions of inputs from the same set of input regions. In vivo multidepth two-photon Ca 2+ imaging of axons of early- and late-born GrCs reveals that both populations represent diverse task variables and stimuli, with small differences in the proportions of axons in encoding of a subset of movement and reward parameters. These results indicate that birth timing makes a modest contribution to the input selection and physiological response properties of GrCs.