Sensory adaptation and the representation of complex odors in the antennal lobe of Apis mellifera.

GASCUE FEDERICO; PÍREZ NICOLÁS; LOCATELLI FERNANDO

Congreso; XXXV Congreso Annual de la Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias; 2020

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

Sensory systems must be adjustedbased on the animal?s experience in order to optimize perception of relevantinformation and ignore stimuli without predictive value. In this context, oneof the main phenomena that modulate the olfactory system is adaptation, whichis defined as the decrease of the sensitivity or response to an odor after asustained exposure to it. Adaptation may occur in brief intervals of time anddepends on the immediate experience of the animal. In this project, we use Apis mellifera to study the representationof binary mixtures of odors in the brain after sensory adaptation to one of thecomponents. We performed calcium imaging experiments to measure odor inducedsignals in the antennal lobe, the first olfactory neuropil in the insect brain.We determined that, after olfactory adaptation, response patterns encoding the mixtureare drastically altered, in a way that favors the representation of thenon-adapted component. These changes are relatively brief, lasting about aminute. Additionally, by means of behavioral experiments, we show that adaptationreduces appetitive learning of the adapted component, while it enhances learningof the other component in cases in which it would normally stay occluded. Theseresults suggest that olfactory adaptation is critical to allow detection ofminor components present in complex mixtures, emphasizing that sensoryadaptation is a fundamental mechanism to improve sensitivity to salient anddiscrete stimuli.