Noguchi Tomohiro, Sasajima Hitoshi, Miyazono Sadaharu, Kashiwayanagi Makoto
Department of Sensory Physiology, Asahikawa Medical University, Midorigaokahigashi 2-1-1-1, Asahikawa 078-8510, Japan.
Neurosci Lett. 2014 Jul 25;576:56-61. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2014.05.058. Epub 2014 Jun 5.
Recently, evidence has accumulated that the vomeronasal system cooperates with the main olfactory system to process volatile cues that regulate the animal's behavior. This is contradictory to the traditional view that the vomeronasal system is quite different from the main olfactory system in the time scale of information processing. Particularly, the firing rate of mitral/tufted cells in the accessory olfactory bulb (MTAOB) is known to be significantly lower than that of mitral cells in the main olfactory bulb (MCMOB). To address this question of whether the low-frequency firing in MTAOB carries less information than the high-frequency firing in MCMOB in the early stages of stimulation, we compared MTAOB and MCMOB for their firing mechanisms and information transfer characteristics. A model computation demonstrated that the inherent channel kinetics of MTAOB was responsible for their firing at a lower frequency than MCMOB. Nevertheless, our analysis suggested that MTAOB were comparable to MCMOB in both the amount and speed of information transfer about depolarizing current intensity immediately after current injection onset (<200ms). Our results support a hypothesis of simultaneous processing of common cues in both systems.
最近，越来越多的证据表明，犁鼻系统与主嗅觉系统协同工作，以处理调节动物行为的挥发性信号。这与传统观点相矛盾，传统观点认为犁鼻系统在信息处理的时间尺度上与主嗅觉系统有很大不同。特别是，已知副嗅球（MTAOB）中的二尖瓣/簇状细胞的放电频率明显低于主嗅球（MCMOB）中的二尖瓣细胞。为了解决在刺激早期MTAOB中的低频放电是否比MCMOB中的高频放电携带更少信息这个问题，我们比较了MTAOB和MCMOB的放电机制和信息传递特征。模型计算表明，MTAOB固有的通道动力学是其放电频率低于MCMOB的原因。然而，我们的分析表明，在电流注入开始后立即（<200ms），MTAOB在关于去极化电流强度的信息传递量和速度方面与MCMOB相当。我们的结果支持了两个系统同时处理共同信号的假设。
