Neural pathways from the vestibular labyrinths to the flocculus in the cat

Abstract

In decerebrate, unanesthetized cats, responses in the flocculus were evoked by electric stimulation of the vestibular nerves and by natural stimulation of horizontal head angular acceleration. Field potentials in the flocculus and intracellular recording from Purkinje cells following vestibular nerve stimulation indicated that the responses were produced by mossy fiber inputs. Field potentials evoked from the contralateral labyrinth were as large as those from the ipsilateral one. There was considerable convergence of bilateral labyrinthine mossy fiber inputs to a Purkinje cell. In view of the effects of incision at the midline of the cerebellum and the brain stem, inputs from the contralateral labyrinth were mainly conveyed through the midline of the brain stem and partly through the midline of the cerebellum. Primary vestibular afferents were involved in the transcerebellar crossed pathway. Fibers of the secondary vestibular neurons projecting to the contralateral flocculus were implicated in the brain stem-mediated pathway and, in part, presumably in the transcerebellar crossed pathway. About one-third of the axon spikes examined in the flocculus responded to horizontal head angular acceleration. Commissural inhibition was observed in more than half of the axon spikes in the flocculus which were presumed to be mono- or polysynaptically activated from the vestibular nerve.