Quasiperiodic rhythms of the inferior olive
Fig 12
Oscillatory dynamics in spontaneous firing in vivo in the presence and absence of gap junctions.
(A) Color-coded inter-complex spike-interval (ICSI) histogram of spontaneous firing of 60 Gjd2-/- and 52 wild-type Purkinje cells, normalized to the bin with the highest complex spike count per Purkinje cell. (B) The Gdj2-/- Purkinje cell distribution shows higher Z-scores than the wild-type population, indicating a stronger rhythmicity during spontaneous firing in the absence of gap junctions (p = 0.003; Kolmogorov-Smirnov test). A Z-score >3 was taken as sign for the presence of rhythmicity–which occurred more often in the Gjd2 KO than in the WT Purkinje cells (colored fraction in the pie diagrams; p = 0.005; Fisher’s exact test). In the absence of gap junctions, rhythmic firing was more stereotypical, as illustrated by less variation in the time to peak (C; p = 0.0431; U = 1030.0; Mann-Whitney test). Note that the left panel of A is a copy of Fig 2B and presented here to facilitate comparison.