Münch Daniel, Galizia C Giovanni
Neurobiology, University of Konstanz, 78457, Konstanz, Germany.
Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Av. Brasília, 1400-038, Lisbon, Portugal.
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2017 Dec;203(12):959-972. doi: 10.1007/s00359-017-1209-1. Epub 2017 Aug 29.
Due to the highly efficient olfactory code, olfactory sensory systems are able to reliably encode enormous numbers of olfactory stimuli. The olfactory code consists of combinatorial activation patterns across sensory neurons, thus its capacity exceeds the number of involved classes of sensory neurons by a manifold. Activation patterns are not static but vary over time, caused by the temporally complex response dynamics of the individual sensory neuron responses. We systematically analyzed the temporal dynamics of olfactory sensory neuron responses to a diverse set of odorants. We find that response dynamics depend on the combination of sensory neuron and odorant and that information about odorant identity can be extracted from the time course of the response. We also show that new response dynamics can arise when mixing two odorants. Our data show that temporal dynamics of odorant responses are able to significantly enhance the coding capacity of olfactory sensory systems.
由于高效的嗅觉编码，嗅觉感觉系统能够可靠地编码大量的嗅觉刺激。嗅觉编码由跨感觉神经元的组合激活模式组成，因此其容量比所涉及的感觉神经元类别数量多出许多倍。激活模式不是静态的，而是随时间变化的，这是由单个感觉神经元反应的时间复杂响应动力学引起的。我们系统地分析了嗅觉感觉神经元对多种气味剂反应的时间动态。我们发现反应动力学取决于感觉神经元和气味剂的组合，并且可以从反应的时间过程中提取有关气味剂身份的信息。我们还表明，当混合两种气味剂时会出现新的反应动力学。我们的数据表明，气味剂反应的时间动态能够显著提高嗅觉感觉系统的编码能力。
