Iurilli Giuliano, Datta Sandeep Robert
Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Neuron. 2017 Mar 8;93(5):1180-1197.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.02.010. Epub 2017 Feb 28.
Different olfactory cortical regions are thought to harbor distinct sensory representations, enabling each area to play a unique role in odor perception and behavior. In the piriform cortex (PCx), spatially dispersed sensory inputs evoke activity in distributed ensembles of neurons that act as substrates for odor learning. In contrast, the posterolateral cortical amygdala (plCoA) receives hardwired inputs that may link specific odor cues to innate olfactory behaviors. Here we show that despite stark differences in the patterning of plCoA and PCx inputs, odor-evoked neural ensembles in both areas are equally capable of discriminating odors, and exhibit similar odor tuning, reliability, and correlation structure. These results demonstrate that brain regions mediating odor-driven innate behaviors can, like brain areas involved in odor learning, represent odor objects using distributive population codes; these findings suggest both alternative mechanisms for the generation of innate odor-driven behaviors and additional roles for the plCoA in odor perception.
不同的嗅觉皮层区域被认为具有独特的感觉表征，使每个区域在气味感知和行为中发挥独特作用。在梨状皮层（PCx）中，空间分散的感觉输入在作为气味学习基础的分布式神经元集合中引发活动。相比之下，后外侧皮质杏仁核（plCoA）接收固定的输入，这些输入可能将特定的气味线索与先天嗅觉行为联系起来。我们在此表明，尽管plCoA和PCx输入模式存在显著差异，但两个区域中由气味诱发的神经集合在区分气味方面同样有能力，并且表现出相似的气味调谐、可靠性和相关结构。这些结果表明，介导气味驱动的先天行为的脑区，与参与气味学习的脑区一样，能够使用分布式群体编码来表征气味对象；这些发现既提示了产生先天气味驱动行为的替代机制，并暗示了plCoA在气味感知中的其他作用。
