DETECTING MINORITY COMPONENTS IN A BINARY MIXTURES: THE ROLE OF OLFACTORY SENSORY ADAPTATION

NICOLAS PIREZ; FEDERICO GASCUE; FERNANDO LOCATELLI

Mar del Plata

Congreso; XXXII CONGRESO ANUAL SAN 2017; 2017

Sociedad Argentina de Invsetigaciones en Neurocienccias

DETECTING MINORITY COMPONENTS IN A BINARY MIXTURES: THE ROLE OFOLFACTORY SENSORY ADAPTATION Pírez N.1,2, Gascue F.1 and Locatelli F.1,21. Departamento de Fisiología, BiologíaMolecular y Celular, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad deBuenos Aires, Argentina 2. Instituto de Fisiología Biología Molecular yNeurociencias, UBA-CONICET, Argentina An important area of researchin neuroscience deals with how contextual information is detected and processedby the nervous system to generate an internal representation of the environment.The olfactory system provides us with an excellent substrate to address thesequestions. There are multiple results that suggest that the coding of olfactoryinformation undergoes multiple changes due to prolonged or repeated exposuresto odorants. Some of these changes require different forms of learning andmemory, whereas others take place in a fast and transitory manner. Sensoryadaptation is usually defined as a phenomenon by which the sensitivity towardsa stimulus decreases after a prolonged exposure to it. This phenomenon ischaracterized by a fast reduction on sensitivity followed by a completerecovery after the disappearance of the stimulus. In this project, we use Apis mellifera as our model system to studythe effect that the olfactory sensory adaptation has on the capability of animals to detect minor componentsembedded in binary mixtures. By means of behavioral experiments, we were ableto show that olfactory sensory adaptation reduces the learning level of pre-exposedstimuli, whereas it enhances the learning of stimuli that would be normally overshadowedby the major component of the mixture. Additionally, by performing calciumimaging experiments to measure odor induced signals in the olfactory system, wewere able to show that the glomerular activation patterns elicited by a binarymixture, changes after pre-exposure of the animal to one of the components,resulting in a representation that drastically favors the underrepresented (orminor) component of the mixture. These results suggest that olfactory sensoryadaptation is critical to allow detection of minor components present incomplex in mixtures, and that it increases the sensibility of the animal to certain stimuli.