Department of Basic Neurosciences, School of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Nat Neurosci. 2012 Mar 11;15(4):537-9. doi: 10.1038/nn.3057.
In mammals, odorant molecules are thought to activate only a few glomeruli, leading to the hypothesis that odor representation in the olfactory bulb is sparse. However, the studies supporting this model used anesthetized animals or monomolecular odorants at limited concentration ranges. Using optical imaging and two-photon microscopy, we found that natural odorants at their native concentrations could elicit dense representations in the olfactory bulb. Both anesthesia and odorant concentration were found to modulate the representation density of natural odorants.
在哺乳动物中,气味分子被认为只能激活少数几个肾小球,这导致了嗅觉球中气味表示稀疏的假说。然而,支持这一模型的研究使用了麻醉动物或单分子气味在有限的浓度范围内。使用光学成像和双光子显微镜,我们发现天然气味在其天然浓度下可以在嗅觉球中引起密集的表示。研究发现,麻醉和气味浓度都会调节天然气味的表示密度。