Neural basis of intensity invariance in olfaction

AYELEN NALLY; MARACHLIAN EMILIANO; FERNANDO LOCATELLI

Mar del PLata

Congreso; XXX Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias SAN 2015; 2015

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

Neural basis of intensityinvariance in olfactionAyelen Nally, EmilianoMarachlian, Fernando LocatelliNumerous animals rely on olfactionto extract ecologically important information from the environment. Atolfactory sensory neurons, the different odors are encoded as combinatorialpatterns of finite number of receptors. Yet in natural conditions, meaningfulodors are present at different concentrations that produce differences in both intensityand combination of receptors activation. Thus, a central problem is how thesystem is able to recognize the same odor across different concentrations inspite of different input patterns. In this project we work on the hypothesis thatlocal inhibition at processing of the olfactory information provides the gain controlthat stabilizes odor identity irrespective of odor intensity. We use honey beesas model animal for studying odor generalization across concentrations and to understandthe neural computations that underlie generalization. In olfactory learningexperiments we observed an asymmetric behavioral generalization from high tolow concentrations and to a less degree from low to high concentration. Usingcalcium imaging we measured the neural representation of high and low odorconcentrations in the antennal lobe. The results are analyzed in terms of the algorithmused by postsynaptic neurons that link combinatorial patterns with odoridentity.