Effect of lesions of the cerebellar nucleus fastigii on attention and frontal cortical activity in rats
Franziska Decker (Hannover), Jonas Jelinek (Hannover), Katharina Korb (Bremen), Franck F. Kamgaing (Hannover), Mesbah Alam (Hannover), Joachim K. Krauss (Hannover), Kerstin Schwabe (Hannover), Elvis J. Hermann (Hannover)
"Cerebellar Mutism" is a challenging problem after resection of pediatric tumors in cerebellar midline structures. Although the symptoms are mainly transient, children often have social and cognitive deficits later in life. Surgery-related lesions of midline structures, such as the fastigial nucleus, are regarded relevant. Previous studies showed that juvenile rats with lesions of the fastigial nucleus have behavioral deficits and altered neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in adulthood. We recorded prefrontal neural activity during testing in a behavioral oddball paradigm for learning and attention.
Rats (lesion [n=9], sham-lesion [n=6], naïve [n=9]) were trained in an auditory 3-tone oddball paradigm, where they had to nose poke to a rare target tone, while ignoring a rare distractor and a frequent standard tone of different frequencies. After training, electrodes were implanted in the mPFC, and local field potentials were recorded during behavioral testing in the oddball paradigm. Histological examination of the cerebellum verified successful lesioning of the fastigial nucleus.
Analysis of the event related potentials showed higher amplitudes of the early and late component to the target as compared to the distractor and standard tones (p<0.05). Analysis of behavior in rats with fastigial lesions only showed subtle behavioral deficits. Lesioned rats overhear the target tone more often than naïve rats. Nevertheless, lesioned rats ignore the standard- and distractor tone more efficiently and poke less between trials. This is not a lesion-induced motor deficit, as the reaction time of rats with fastigial lesion do not differ from that of sham-lesioned or naïve controls.
Overall, this model provides an opportunity to investigate in more depth auditory processing with regard to attention and decision making, both in unaffected and in disease models.
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