The calcium sensor, rather than the route of calcium entry, defines cerebellar plasticity pathways

Reply to Piochon et al.: NMDARs in Purkinje cells are not involved in parallel fiber–Purkinje cell synaptic plasticity or motor learning

“…Consistent with the concept that we proposed ( 6 ), Piochon et al. ( 7 ) suggest that, when using physiological concentrations of divalent cations, similar to the one in our study ( 1 ), LTD requires clusters of complex spikes. However, not only the stimulus pattern of CF activity ( 6 ) but also the presynaptic stimulation conditions should optimally match the in vivo situation.…”

“…Taken together, we appreciate the feedback of Piochon et al. ( 7 ) and share their drive to gain more insight through further studies. However, based on our findings and the current literature, we do not see sufficient reason to change our original conclusions.…”

Diverse role of NMDA receptors for dendritic integration of neural dynamics

“…At Purkinje cells, NMDA receptors are considered abundantly existing in CF-PC synapses [16]. Recent evidence suggests they play an important role in PF-PC synapses [16,18,[22][23][24][25]. Studying the role of NMDARs in neural dendritic and somatic responses is beneficial to enrich the information transmission mechanism between neurons and provide a reference for studying synaptic integration ability in single neurons.…”

“…However, other evidence suggested that NMDARs could be involved in the PC activity via PFs modulated by climbing fibers from the inferior olivary nucleus [ 16 , 18 , 22 , 23 ]. These experimental observations raise a debate about how NMDAR contributes to regulating the dynamics of PF-PC synapses [ 24 , 25 ]. Furthermore, some studies considered the distribution and functional characteristics of NMDARs [ 26 , 27 ], and suggested that the location of NMDARs on dendrites may be the decisive factor of their signal transmission ability [ 28 ].…”