Daly Kevin C, Carrell Lynnsey A, Mwilaria Esther
Department of Biology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA.
Behav Neurosci. 2007 Aug;121(4):794-807. doi: 10.1037/0735-7044.121.4.794.
The precise relationship between olfactory transduction sensitivity and sensitivity at the level of sensory perception is poorly understood. The goal of this work was to correlate neurophysiological measures of sensory transduction and psychophysical measures of salient odor perception using the moth (Manduca sexta). Moths were conditioned to respond to a single monomolecular odor and then tested across a dilution series. Resulting concentration-response functions were dependent on the conditioning odor and its concentration but not on the moth's sex. Comparison of responsiveness to odor versus an odorless blank provided a statistical indicator of detection threshold. Separate control experiments revealed that conditioned responsiveness to odor was a function of test concentration and independent of the conditioning concentration. Next, electroantennogram (EAG) responses to these odorants and concentrations were recorded. EAG responses were highly correlated with the behavioral results but typically identified lower detection thresholds. Furthermore, significant effects of sex, Sex x Odor, and Sex x Odor x Concentration were observed only within the EAG data, suggesting a mismatch across methods. Possible reasons for and implications of this mismatch are discussed.
嗅觉转导敏感性与感官知觉水平的敏感性之间的确切关系尚不清楚。这项工作的目标是利用烟草天蛾（Manduca sexta），将感官转导的神经生理学测量与显著气味感知的心理物理学测量关联起来。让烟草天蛾适应对单一单分子气味做出反应，然后在一系列稀释浓度下进行测试。所得的浓度-反应函数取决于适应的气味及其浓度，但不取决于烟草天蛾的性别。对气味与无味空白的反应性比较提供了检测阈值的统计指标。单独的对照实验表明，对气味的适应性反应是测试浓度的函数，与适应浓度无关。接下来，记录了触角电图（EAG）对这些气味剂和浓度的反应。EAG反应与行为结果高度相关，但通常识别出较低的检测阈值。此外，仅在EAG数据中观察到性别、性别×气味和性别×气味×浓度的显著影响，这表明不同方法之间存在不匹配。讨论了这种不匹配的可能原因及其影响。
