Measuring and modeling experience dependent plasticity in sensory processing

MARACHLIAN EMILIANO; JEN-YUNG CHEN; COLLINS ASSISI; HUERTA R.; SMITH BRIAN; MAXIM BAZHENOV; LOCATELLI FERNANDO

Huerta Grande, Cordoba

Congreso; Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias; 2012

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

Animals are immersed in a world of countless stimuli. To deal with the excess of information they have systems that process the sensory afference and detect the relevant information. In the present work we ask how this detection is optimized when the classification ?relevant or irrelevant? depends on the experience of each individual. How the sensory processing is adjusted in a dynamic and reversible way to help distinguishing the relevant information from the noise? The olfactory system of insects provides a good model for this study. Odors in nature are complex mixture, in which irrelevant components may hide the presence of relevant ones. We show results that put in evidence how the bees distinguish the presence of a rewarded component in a mixture. We performed calcium imaging in the antennal lobe of bees (the first processing center for olfactory information) and measured the neural representation of complex mixtures and pure components. We found that the relative weight of the components in the representation of the mixture depends on the experience of the animals with the components. The results do not show impact of the training in the representation of the pure odors. Based on these results we present a mathematical model that replicates the antennal lobe connectivity and reveals potential sites of plasticity that may account for the experimental results.