Are Purkinje Cell Pauses Drivers of Classically Conditioned Blink Responses?

Abstract

Several lines of evidence show that classical or Pavlovian conditioning of blink responses depends on the cerebellum. Recordings from cerebellar Purkinje cells that control the eyelid and the conditioned blink show that during training with a conditioning protocol, a Purkinje cell develops a pause response to the conditional stimulus. This conditioned cellular response has many of the properties that characterise the overt blink. The present paper argues that the learned Purkinje cell pause response is the memory trace and main driver of the overt conditioned blink and that it explains many well-known behavioural phenomena.