Journal
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 27, Issue 8, Pages 2091-2101Publisher
SOC NEUROSCIENCE
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3779-06.2007
Keywords
sensory coding; olfactory bulb; in vivo; mitral cell; receptive field; odor; mixture
Categories
Funding
- NIDCD NIH HHS [R01 DC005671] Funding Source: Medline
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The mammalian olfactory system recognizes an enormous variety of odorants carrying a wide range of important behavioral cues. In the main olfactory bulb ( MOB), odorants are ultimately represented through the action potential activity of mitral/ tufted cells ( M/ Ts), whose selectivity and tuning to odorant molecules are therefore fundamental determinants of MOBsensory coding. However, the sheer number and diversity of discrete olfactory stimuli has been a major barrier to comprehensively evaluating M/ T selectivity. To address this issue, we assessed M/ T odorant responses in anesthetized mice to a 348- odorant panel widely and systematically distributed throughout chemical space, presented both individually and in mixtures at behaviorally relevant concentrations. We found that M/ T activation by odorants was markedly selective, with neurons responding robustly, sensitively, and reliably to only a highly restricted subset of stimuli. Multiple odorants activating a single neuron commonly shared clear structural similarity, but M/ T tuning also frequently extended beyond obviously defined chemical categories. Cells typically responded to effective compounds presented both individually and in mixtures, although firing rates evoked by mixtures typically showed partial suppression. Response selectivity was further confirmed in awake animals by chronic recordings of M/ Ts. These data indicate that individual M/ Ts encode specific odorant attributes shared by only a small fraction of compounds and imply that theMOBrelays the collective molecular features of an odorant stimulus through a restricted set of M/ Ts, each narrowly tuned to a particular stimulus characteristic.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available