Temporal coupling between neuronal activity and blood flow in rat cerebellar cortex as indicated by field potential analysis

Laser-Doppler flowmetry and extracellular recordings of field potentials were used to examine the temporal coupling between neuronal activity and increases in cerebellar blood flow (CeBF). Climbing fibre-evoked increases in CeBF were dependent on stimulus duration, indicating that increases in CeBF reflected a time integral in neuronal activity. The simplest way to represent neuronal activity over time was to obtain a running summation of evoked field potential amplitudes (runΣFP). RunΣFP was calculated for each stimulus protocol and compared with the time course of the CeBF responses to demonstrate coupling between nerve cell activity and CeBF. In the climbing fibre system, the amplitude and time course of CeBF were in agreement with the calculated postsynaptic runΣFP (2–20 Hz for 60 s). This suggested coupling between CeBF and neuronal activity in this excitatory, monosynaptic, afferent-input system under these conditions. There was no correlation between runΣFP and CeBF during prolonged stimulation. Parallel fibre-evoked increases in CeBF correlated with runΣFP of pre- and postsynaptic potentials (2–15 Hz for 60 s). At higher stimulation frequencies and during longer-lasting stimulation the time course and amplitudes of CeBF responses correlated with runΣFP of presynaptic, but not postsynaptic potentials. This suggested a more complex relationship in this mixed inhibitory-excitatory, disynaptic, afferent-input system. This study has demonstrated temporal coupling between neuronal activity and CeBF in the monosynaptic, excitatory climbing-fibre system. In the mixed mono- and disynaptic parallel fibre system, temporal coupling was most clearly observed at low stimulation frequencies. We propose that appropriate modelling of electrophysiological data is needed to document functional coupling of neuronal activity and blood flow.