TIMING IMPLICATIONS OF METABOTROPIC MECHANISMS FOR CEREBELLAR LEARNING

A major theme of the systems physiologists is the critical timing func tion of the cerebellum. However, the biophysicists do not appear to di rectly address the biophysical basis of the adaptive timing competence implicated in the physiological and behavioral data. Thus, the bridge between the macroscopic and microscopic data bases seems to be incomp lete in a critical area. We report successful results from an attempt to add the missing part of the bridge. It comes in the form of a model of how the second messenger system activated by parallel fiber inputs - the mGluR channel - can literally bridge the temporal gap between C S and CR, both in standard conditioning tasks and more generally.