Nowotny Thomas, Rabinovich Mikhail I, Huerta Ramón, Abarbanel Henry D I
Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0402, USA.
J Comput Neurosci. 2003 Sep-Oct;15(2):271-81. doi: 10.1023/a:1025825111088.
Sensory information is represented in a spatio-temporal code in the antennal lobe, the first processing stage of the olfactory system of insects. We propose a novel mechanism for decoding this information in the next processing stage, the mushroom body. The Kenyon cells in the mushroom body of insects exhibit lateral excitatory connections at their axons. We demonstrate that slow lateral excitation between Kenyon cells allows one to decode sequences of activity in the antennal lobe. We are thus able to clarify the role of the existing connections as well as to demonstrate a novel mechanism for decoding temporal information in neuronal systems. This mechanism complements the variety of existing temporal decoding schemes. It seems that neuronal systems not only have a rich variety of code types but also quite a diversity of algorithms for transforming different codes into each other.
感觉信息在触角叶中以时空编码的形式呈现，触角叶是昆虫嗅觉系统的第一个处理阶段。我们提出了一种在嗅觉系统的下一个处理阶段即蘑菇体中解码该信息的新机制。昆虫蘑菇体中的肯扬细胞在其轴突处表现出侧向兴奋性连接。我们证明，肯扬细胞之间缓慢的侧向兴奋使得人们能够解码触角叶中的活动序列。因此，我们能够阐明现有连接的作用，并证明一种在神经元系统中解码时间信息的新机制。这种机制补充了现有的各种时间解码方案。看来，神经元系统不仅具有丰富多样的编码类型，而且在将不同编码相互转换的算法方面也相当多样。
