Neural bases of generalization across odor intensities in the honey bee Apis mellifera

AYELEN NALLY; MARACHLIAN EMILIANO; FERNANDO LOCATELLI

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 1° Reunión de Biología del Comportamiento del Cono Sur; 2017

Instituto de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental y Aplicada

Numerous animals relyon olfactory cues to extract ecologically relevant information from theenvironment. This information is detected and primarily encoded by theolfactory sensory neurons. Each specific odorant recruits a particularcombination of receptors that provides the input for its internalrepresentation. Nevertheless, in natural conditions meaningful odors are normallypresent at different concentrations that produce may produce different activitypatterns, both, in terms of intensity of activation and in terms of the combinationof receptors that are recruited. Yet, a central problem is how animalsrecognize the same odor across different concentrations in spite of differentinput patterns. We work on the hypothesis that local inhibition at processingof the olfactory information in the antennal lobe provides the gain modulation thatcontributes to stabilize odor identity irrespective of its intensity. We usehoney bees as model animal for studying odor generalization across intensitiesand to understand the neural computations that underlie generalization acrossintensities. Using calcium imaging we measured the neural representations ofdifferent odors and concentrations in the antennal lobe. In behavioral andpharmacological experiments we demonstrate local inhibitions within theantennal lobe are needed to generalize odors across intensities. The resultssupport that the GABAergic local network in the antennal lobe contributes tonormalize odor identity irrespective of intensity.