Adapting to the environment: characterization of olfactory sensory adaptation

FEDERICO GASCUE; NICOLAS PIREZ; LOCATELLI, FERNANDO FEDERICO

Congreso; Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias; 2022

Sociendad Argentina de Neurociencias

The olfactorysystem is continuously exposed to an extraordinary range of chemical stimuli. Tomaintain sensitivity to meaningful odors the system must be adjusted based on animal’sexperience. One of the main phenomena that adjust the system is sensory adaptation,which is defined as a decrease in sensitivity or response to an odor after asustained exposure to it. Adaptation may occur in brief intervals of time anddepends on the immediately close experience of the animal. In this project, weinvestigate the role and the mechanisms involved in olfactory sensoryadaptation using honey bees. By performing electroantennograms we measured theactivity of olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) and characterized temporalaspects of this phenomenon such as induction, duration, and recovery time. Wealso analyzed whether adaptation depends on odor identity. We found that adaptationat the ORNs level, is odor specific and that odors that are relevant for theanimal show a certain degree of resistance to adaptation. We also performedcalcium imaging experiments to measure odor induced signals in the antennallobe, the first olfactory neuropil in the insect brain. This allowed us toobserve how adaptation changes the neural representation of odors and wedescribe that cross-adaptation occurs among odors that share activated glomeruliin the response pattern. The results emphasize that sensory adaptation iscritical to maintain the olfactory system unsaturated and ready to detect changesin the olfactory context.