Experience-dependent tuning of olfactory percetion

MARACHLIAN EMILIANO; FERNANDO LOCATELLI

Sapporo

Congreso; International Conference for Neuroethology; 2014

International Society for Neuroethology

Experience-dependent tuning of olfactory perception in honey bees Fernando Locatelli andEmiliano Marachlian Laboratorio deNeurobiología de la Memoria, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales,Universidad de Buenos Aires. IFIByNE- CONICET.Argentina Natural olfactory stimuli to which animals are exposed are normally complexand variable mixtures. The meaning and significance of the different componentsmay change and the animals have to keep their olfactory sense adjusted todetect relevant odors. We asked if component detection is adjusted byexperience?dependent plasticity in the olfactory processing in the antennallobe. We performed calcium imaging in projections neurons of the honey beeantennal lobe and measured the neural representation of mixtures and purecomponents in naïve and in olfactory trained honey bees. Then we established algorithmsthat allow prediction of the pattern elicited by the mixture based on thepatterns elicited by the pure components. We found that the way in which thepure components are combined to produce the representation of the mixture dependson the previous olfactory experience. The representation of the mixtures isbiased toward the representation of the learned component and away from thebackground component. The effect is evidenced by a reduction in elements thatencode the background odor, suggesting that the shift in the representation ofthe mixture is provided by strengthening of inhibitory interactions. Therelevance of this mechanism is evaluated in behavioral experiments.