The parieto-rubro-olivary pathway in the cat

Stimulation of the parietal association cortex as well as the frontal motor cortex elicited clearly extracellular unitary activities or field potentials in the ipsilateral inferior olive in the cat. The parietal-induced responses came out generally at a longer and more variable latency than the frontal-induced ones. This suggested the existence of an indirect pathway from the parietal association cortex to the inferior olive. The recording sites for the parietal-induced responses were located not only in the dorsal lamella but also in the ventral lamella of the principal olive and in the medial accessory olive. Such olivary sites were exclusively in the rostral half of the inferior olive, and these areas in the olive were considered to give projection fibres predominantly to the hemispherical parts of the cerebe-lar cortex (neocerebellum). Small neuronal cells were labelled with horseradish peroxidase (HRP) homolaterally in the midbrain tegmentum, after HRP was injected through recording glass microelectrodes into the inferior olive where only the parietal-induced responses were evidently recorded. These small cells were distributed in the rostral one-third of the red nucleus and/or around the adjacent midbrain reticular formation close to the lateral border of the red nucleus. In referring to recent anatomical and physiological data, such small neurones labelled with HRP could be identified as the parvocellular red nucleus neurones. The present results indicate the existence of the parieto-rubro-olivary pathway system in the cat and suggest, in association with our previous studies, that the parvocellular red nucleus neurones participate in control of highly co-ordinated posture and movement predominantly through the neocerebellum.