Data supplement for: Disrupting cortico-cerebellar communication impairs dexterity

This dataset, along with the corresponding code, is a supplement to
“Disrupting cortico-cerebellar communication impairs dexterity” (Guo*,
Sauerbrei* et al., eLife 2021). It consists of single-unit
electrophysiology data from the pontine nuclei, Purkinje cells, cerebellar
nuclei, and motor cortex of awake mice, along with measurements of the
hand position of mice performing reaching movements. These data address
the question of how the dynamics of motor cortex and cerebellum interact
to control skilled reaching. First, we recorded from neurons in the
pontine nuclei (PN), the bridge between cerebral cortex and the
cerebellum, as mice reached to and grasped food pellets. Most PN neurons
were strongly modulated by an acoustic go cue, by movement onset, or by
both. Optogenetic stimulation of the PN strongly entrained spiking in
Purkinje cells and the cerebellar nuclei, and induced transients in some
motor cortical neurons. PN stimulation during a reach-to-grasp task
induced a range of deficits, including decreases in success rate,
increases in the standard deviation of hand position, increases in
movement duration, and overreaching of the target. During movement, PN
stimulation altered neural activity in the cerebellar nuclei and motor
cortex, and a velocity decoding analysis revealed that these shifts in
activity were consistent with the kinematic effects of stimulation. Our
findings suggest that interaction between motor cortex and the cerebellum
is essential for fine-tuning movements to enable accurate and precise
behavior. Code required to generate the figures is available in the
companion repository on Zenodo, and a list of which scripts generate which
figure panels is contained in /docs/README.