CHARACTERIZATION OF SENSORY ADAPTATION IN THE OLFACTORY SYSTEM OF THE HONEY BEE APIS MELLIFERA

LOCATELLI FERNANDO; FEDERICO GASCUE; NICOLAS PIREZ

Montevideo

Congreso; COMPORTA 2019; 2019

Sensory adaptation is defined as a temporal and reversible decrease inthe sensitivity to a stimulus after a sustained exposure to it. It provides plasticityto sensory systems and is thought to contribute to segregation among stimuli thatare presented close or at the same time. We investigate different aspects aboutthe function and neurobiology of sensory adaptation in the olfactory system ofthe honey bee Apis mellifera. By means of behavioral experiments, wecharacterized temporal aspects of this phenomenon, such as induction, durationand recovery time. We also investigate the effects that sensory adaptation hason the perception of complex odor stimuli, to understand when and in whichextent, adaptation changes the perceptual quality of a stimulus. We found thatwhen animals undergo adaptation to a given odor, the perceptual quality of abinary mixture that contains this odor changes drastically. This effect couldbe demonstrated, both, at the level of the behavior and at the level of theneural circuits that encode the odors. Particularly we found that sensoryadaptation does not only reduce the input and perception of the adaptedstimuli, but also increases the sensibility an perception of minor competingstimuli that otherwise would occluded.