The Best Paper Award
Cerebellum-Machine Interface to Evaluate Direct Causality between Cerebellar Purkinje Cell Single Unit Activity and Motor Learning
Kazuma KATAGIRI , Yoshiyuki TANAKA , and Yutaka HIRATA (Chubu University)
(和文論文誌D 平成24年5月号掲載)
Kazuma KATAGIRI Yoshiyuki TANAKA Yutaka HIRATA      
 The Purkinje cell is well known to control the vestibule-ocular reflex. However, this knowledge has been revealed indirectly according to the relationship between a motion change of animals and an electrical change of neural output. Therefore, it was necessary to develop an experimental method which could measure a change of neural output pattern caused by motor learning.
 This paper describes the development of an experimental system for a goldfish. In this system, image discrepancy on the retina was caused by an electric motor and the motor was controlled by the single unit activity of Purkinje cells, which was modified by the Brain Machine Interface technique. After the goldfish was forced to learn how to control eye movement to see something precisely, the output of a Purkinje cell was recorded. The results show that the electric motor was controlled precisely by changing the neural firing pattern of the Purkinje cell, and the image discrepancy on the retina decreased. Thus, this result showed that there was a direct relationship between the firing pattern of a single Purkinje cell and motor learning in the experiment.
 This paper describes a very novel, ambitious and unique technique to control an electric motor by using the single unit activity of a Purkinje cell with the BMI technique, and to measure the process of controlling the electric motor, in order to realize a measurement which was previously thought to be impossible.
 The causality between cerebellar Purkinje cell single unit activity and motor learning was revealed directly in the well-known vestibule-ocular reflex which has been investigated well from the viewpoint of the mechanism and the neural circuit. The results of this paper are considered to offer a major contribution to the scientific field because this experimental method could be applied to other animals including non-human primates. Also, the way of learning in sensory-motor relations of animals including humans could be clarified if the motor learning mechanism in cerebellum is analyzed. After that, the results may be utilized in research fields such as robotics, so the work in this paper is considered to be influential. Overall, this paper is of high quality with excellent and valuable content.

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