Lin Da Yu, Shea Stephen D, Katz Lawrence C
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Neurobiology, Box 3209, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27710, USA.
Neuron. 2006 Jun 15;50(6):937-49. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2006.03.021.
Natural odorants are complex mixtures of diverse chemical compounds. Monomolecular odorants are represented in the main olfactory bulb by distinct spatial patterns of activated glomeruli. However, it remains unclear how individual compounds contribute to population representations of natural stimuli, which appear to be unexpectedly sparse. We combined gas chromatography and intrinsic signal imaging to visualize glomerular responses to natural stimuli and their fractionated components. While whole stimuli activated up to 20 visible glomeruli, each fractionated component activated only one or few glomeruli, and most glomeruli were activated by only one component. Thus, responses to complex mixtures reflected activation by multiple components, with each contributing only a small part of the overall representation. We conclude that the population response to a complex stimulus is largely the sum of the responses to its individual components, and activation of an individual glomerulus independently signals the presence of a specific component.
天然气味剂是多种化合物的复杂混合物。单分子气味剂在主嗅球中由激活的肾小球的不同空间模式表示。然而，尚不清楚单个化合物如何对天然刺激的群体表征做出贡献，而天然刺激的表征似乎出人意料地稀疏。我们结合气相色谱法和内在信号成像来可视化肾小球对天然刺激及其分离成分的反应。虽然整个刺激激活了多达20个可见的肾小球，但每个分离成分仅激活一个或几个肾小球，并且大多数肾小球仅由一种成分激活。因此，对复杂混合物的反应反映了多种成分的激活，每种成分仅占总体表征的一小部分。我们得出结论，对复杂刺激的群体反应在很大程度上是对其各个成分反应的总和，单个肾小球的激活独立地表明特定成分的存在。
