Authors: Hassan Marzban Nathan Hoy Tooka Aavani Diana K Sarko Kenneth C Catania Richard Hawkes
Publish Date: 2011/02/08
Volume: 10, Issue: 3, Pages: 435-448
Abstract
Despite the apparent uniformity in cellular composition of the adult mammalian cerebellar cortex it is actually highly compartmentalized into transverse zones and within each zone further subdivided into a reproducible array of parasagittal stripes This basic cerebellar architecture is highly conserved in birds and mammals However different species have very different cerebellar morphologies and it is unclear if cerebellar architecture reflects taxonomic relations or ecological niches To explore this we have examined the cerebellum of the naked molerat Heterocephalus glaber a burrowing rodent with adaptations to a subterranean life that include only a rudimentary visual system The cerebellum of H glaber resembles that of other rodents with the remarkable exception that cerebellar regions that are prominent in the handling of visual information the central zone nodular zone and dorsal paraflocculus are greatly reduced or absent In addition there is a notable increase in size in the posterior zone consistent with an expanded role for the trigeminal somatosensory system These data suggest that cerebellar architecture may be substantially modified to serve a particular ecological nicheWe thank Fyza Shaikh and Whitney Cleghorn for their invaluable assistance with preparation of naked molerat tissue for Western blot analysis and Dr Jan Voogd Rotterdam for advice on an earlier draft of the MS These studies were supported by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research RH a summer studentship from the PURE program at the University of Calgary NH and NIH DE016061 and NSF 0844743 grants to KCC
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