Intrinsic Plasticity and Information Storage in Cerebellar Purkinje Cells

We will train freely moving mice in delay eyeblink conditioning using whisker vibration as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and shock to the eye as the unconditioned stimulus (US). Fifteen mice will be trained in both the conditioning experimental and pseudoconditioning control groups. We will use techniques for these experiments that we have described (Galvez, et al., 2009). Following behavioral training, we will have the mice transported to Dr. Christian Hansel’s laboratory at the University of Chicago for biophysical recording. We propose to do these experiments initially in wild type mice in Grant Year 1. If the Hansel laboratory detects alterations in Purkinje cell excitability in Purkinje cells from conditioned mice, as anticipated, we will do subsequent training in the SK2 knockout mice in Grant Year 2 and the PC-specific BK knockout mice in Grant Year 3. Dr. Hansel is proposing to use the SK2 knockout and PC-specific BK knockout mice in his research program.