Employing a Nembutal anesthesia, a cat was decerebrated, a quantitative study was performed on the distribution and overlapping of the evoked potentials obtained from the utricular, trigeminal and radial nerve stimulation in the cerebellar anterior lobe.
1. The waveform of evoked potentials obtained from the utricular, trigeminal nerve stimulation were the same in nature as that of radial nerve stimulation, i.e., the deflection consisted of the first slow positive, the second marked fast positive and the last slow negative deflection. The distribution of the utricular evoked potentials was localized at the ipsilateral margin of the anterior lobe but the trigeminal nerve representation spread along the folium in the cerebellar anterior lobe, contrasted with the longitudinal arrangement of the radial nerve representation.
2. The recovery process of the evoked potentials obtained by double shock stimulation of each nerve showed a smooth identical curve which recovered almost 100% by one sec, 85% by 0.3 sec. and 50% by 0.1 sec. but the second stimulation was invalid by 0.03 sec.
3. The recovery process of evoked potentials obtained by different nerve stimulation in six group of combinations showed the wavy periodical fluctuation which seemed to be due to the reverberating circuit of the cerebellum. This recovery ratio had a linear relationship to the negative components of the preceding potentials whose size was parallel to the synchronous firing of the Purkinje cells.
4. The mode of overlapping of activity due to occlusion of representations elicited by simultaneous double shock stimulation to different nerves, was different at the six points of the lateral portion of the cerebellar anterior lobe. It was demonstrated that the overlapping ratio of the simultaneous triple shocks could be anticipated from the result of overlapping in double shock stimulation.
5. It was found that the reduction ratio of the potentials, obtained from simultaneous stimulation of the different nerves, was not proportional to the amplitude of individual evoked potentials, but the ratio of the unaffected area of the major representation in double shock stimulation to the original extent of the representation, i.e., the residual ratio was a function of the potential height in a hyperbolic fashion.
6. The varying ratio of occlusion with lapse of time was followed and it was observed that the extent of the occluded area fluctuated with waxing and waning phases when activity produced from different kinds of nerve inputs interfered each other.
View full abstract