Auditory responses in the posterior vermis of the cat: the buried cerebellar cortex.

Although an auditory area has been found over the exposed area of lobules VI-VIII in the posterior cerebellar vermis of the cat, there has been little information on its buried portion. This point should be of some concern, since very little of the brain tissue in lobules VI-VIII of the cerebellar cortex is exposed. We have systematically explored the posterior vermis with long electrode tracks and compared auditory responses recorded from neurons within the granule cell layer in the folial crown with those in the buried cortex. There was a similarity between neural activities recorded from the exposed surface area and those from the buried portion both in the temporal discharge pattern of neurons to sound and in the spatial distribution pattern of auditory responses.