Zou Zhihua, Li Fusheng, Buck Linda B
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Divisions of Basic Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA 98109, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 May 24;102(21):7724-9. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0503027102. Epub 2005 May 23.
In the olfactory system, environmental chemicals are deconstructed into neural signals and then reconstructed to form odor perceptions. Much has been learned about odor coding in the olfactory epithelium and bulb, but little is known about how odors are subsequently encoded in the cortex to yield diverse perceptions. Here, we report that the representation of odors by fixed glomeruli in the olfactory bulb is transformed in the cortex into highly distributed and multiplexed odor maps. In the mouse olfactory cortex, individual odorants are represented by subsets of sparsely distributed neurons. Different odorants elicit distinct, but partially overlapping, patterns that are strikingly similar among individuals. With increases in odorant concentration, the representations expand spatially and include additional cortical neurons. Structurally related odorants have highly related representations, suggesting an underlying logic to the mapping of odor identities in the cortex.
在嗅觉系统中，环境化学物质被解构为神经信号，然后重新构建以形成气味感知。关于嗅觉上皮和嗅球中的气味编码，我们已经了解了很多，但对于气味随后如何在皮质中进行编码以产生多样的感知却知之甚少。在此，我们报告称，嗅球中由固定嗅小球所呈现的气味表征，在皮质中转变为高度分散且多重复用的气味图谱。在小鼠嗅觉皮质中，单个气味剂由稀疏分布的神经元子集所代表。不同的气味剂引发不同但部分重叠的模式，这些模式在个体之间惊人地相似。随着气味剂浓度的增加，这些表征在空间上扩展并纳入更多的皮质神经元。结构相关的气味剂具有高度相关的表征，这表明皮质中气味特征映射存在潜在的逻辑。
