Paul Chadderton and colleagues at UCL's Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research used a method called patch-clamping to measure the activity of a single granule cell in an intact brain. The findings are published in the latest issue of Nature.

Granule cells are tiny. Their size 20 times smaller than a human hair has made it extremely difficult for scientists to study them in action.

Granule cells make up the input layer of the cerebellum and receive sensory information from the body, for example when a finger touches a surface. The cerebellum is thought to act as a link between the body's senses and its movements, such as guiding the finger across a surface smoothly and efficiently. However, scientists still know very little about how the cerebellum does its job.

The group's findings could ultimately help researchers understand more about movement disorders and potentially help in the development of drug treatments targeting the cerebellum, for example for sufferers of ataxia, a movement coordination problem which affects 150,000 people in the US, and dysmetria, where patients have difficulty regulating the rate, range and force of movement.

The group also found that the activity of granule cells is kept in check by a 'tonic inhibition' mechanism. There is growing evidence that alcohol can boost this inhibition and thus affect cerebellar function, possibly accounting for the drunken swaying and unsteadiness often associated with inebriation.

By applying the patch-clamp technique, where a cell membrane is gently sucked onto a glass pipette which records small electrical signals coming from the cell, UCL researc
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Contact: Jenny Gimpel
j.gimpel@ucl.ac.uk
44-207-679-9739
University College London
21-Apr-2004