Cardiac Purkinje cells are important triggers of ventricular arrhythmias associated with heritable and acquired syndromes; however, the mechanisms responsible for this proarrhythmic behavior are incompletely understood. Here, through transcriptional profiling of genetically labeled cardiomyocytes, we identified expression of Purkinje cell protein-4 (Pcp4), a putative regulator of calmodulin and...

Cerebellar Purkinje cells in vitro fire recurrent sequences of Sodium and Calcium spikes. Here, we analyze the Purkinje cell using harmonic analysis, and our experiments reveal that its output signal is comprised of three distinct frequency bands, which are combined using Amplitude and Frequency Modulation (AM/FM). We find that the three characteristic frequencies - Sodium, Calcium and Switchin...

Neurons with similar morphology and neurotransmitter content located at a specific brain region may be part of the same or functionally separate networks. To address the question whether morphologically similar neurons have similar structural architecture at the chromosomal level, we studied Purkinje neurons in the cerebellum. Previous studies have shown that in Purkinje neurons centromeres of ...

In this paper I describe the key features of optic flow processing in pigeons. Optic flow is the visual motion that occurs across the entire retina as a result of self-motion and is processed by subcortical visual pathways that project to the cerebellum. These pathways originate in two retinal-recipient nuclei, the nucleus of the basal optic root (nBOR) and the nucleus lentiformis mesencephali,...

BACKGROUND The mechanisms that maintain long duration ventricular fibrillation (LDVF) are unclear. The difference in distribution of the Purkinje system in dogs and pigs was explored to determine if Purkinje activation propagates to stimulate working myocardium (WM) during LDVF and WM pacing. METHODS AND RESULTS In-vivo extracellular recordings were made from 1044 intramural plunge and epicar...

BACKGROUND Triggered Purkinje ectopy can lead to the initiation of serious ventricular arrhythmias in post-myocardial infarction patients. In the canine model, Purkinje cells from the subendocardial border of the healing infarcted heart can initiate ventricular arrhythmias. Intracellular Ca(2+) abnormalities underlie these arrhythmias, yet the subcellular reasons for these abnormalities remain ...

Previous studies of wild-type mice or mutant-wild-type mouse chimeras using the neurological mutant staggerer have supported a numerical matching hypothesis for target-related cell death. However, analyses of chimeras of a second neurological mutant, lurcher, have suggested that there may be significant flexibility in the relationship between the numbers of pre- and postsynaptic neurons. Wherea...

BACKGROUND Purkinje cells (PCs) comprise the most distal component of the cardiac conduction system, and their unique electrophysiological properties and the anatomic complexity of the Purkinje fiber network may account for the prominent role these cells play in the genesis of various arrhythmic syndromes. METHODS AND RESULTS Differential transcriptional profiling of murine Purkinje fibers an...

Information is carried out of the cerebellar cortical microcircuit via action potentials propagated along Purkinje cell axons. In several human neurodegenerative diseases, focal axonal swellings on Purkinje cells - known as torpedoes - have been associated with Purkinje cell loss. Interestingly, torpedoes are also reported to appear transiently during development in rat cerebellum. The function...