Wright Geraldine A, Smith Brian H
Department of Entomology, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.
Chem Senses. 2004 Feb;29(2):127-35. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjh016.
Naturally occurring odors used by animals for mate recognition, food identification and other purposes must be detected at concentrations that vary across several orders of magnitude. Olfactory systems must therefore have the capacity to represent odors over a large range of concentrations regardless of dramatic changes in the salience, or perceived intensity, of a stimulus. The stability of the representation of an odor relative to other odors across concentration has not been extensively evaluated. We tested the ability of honey bees to discriminate pure odorants across a range of concentrations at and above their detection threshold. Our study showed that pure odorant compounds became progressively easier for honey bees to discriminate with increasing concentration. Discrimination is, therefore, a function of odorant concentration. We hypothesize that the recruitment of sensory cell populations across a range of concentrations may be important for odor coding, perhaps by changing its perceptual qualities or by increasing its salience against background stimuli, and that this mechanism is a general property of olfactory systems.
动物用于配偶识别、食物辨别及其他目的的天然气味，必须在浓度相差几个数量级的情况下被检测到。因此，嗅觉系统必须具备在大范围浓度下表征气味的能力，而不管刺激的显著性或感知强度发生巨大变化。相对于其他气味，一种气味在不同浓度下表征的稳定性尚未得到广泛评估。我们测试了蜜蜂在其检测阈值及以上的一系列浓度下辨别纯气味剂的能力。我们的研究表明，随着浓度增加，纯气味剂化合物对蜜蜂来说越来越容易辨别。因此，辨别是气味剂浓度的函数。我们假设，在一系列浓度下募集感觉细胞群体可能对气味编码很重要，也许是通过改变其感知特性或通过增加其相对于背景刺激的显著性，并且这种机制是嗅觉系统的一个普遍特性。
