Journal
CURRENT BIOLOGY
Volume 24, Issue 5, Pages 561-567Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.01.063
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Funding
- French National Research Agency [2007-NEURO-003, 2010-BLAN-1712-01]
- CNRS
- University Paul Sabatier (project APIGENE)
- Institut Universitaire de France
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Olfactory systems dynamically encode odor information in the nervous system. Insects constitute a well-established model for the study of the neural processes underlying olfactory perception. In insects, odors are detected by sensory neurons located in the antennae, whose axons project to a primary processing center, the antennal lobe [1, 2]. There, the olfactory message is reshaped and further conveyed to higher-order centers, the mushroom bodies and the lateral horn [3-5]. Previous work has intensively analyzed the principles of olfactory processing in the antennal lobe and in the mushroom bodies [6-9]. However, how the lateral horn participates in olfactory coding remains comparatively more enigmatic. We studied odor representation at the input to the lateral horn of the honeybee, a social insect that relies on both floral odors for foraging and pheromones for social communication [10, 11]. Using in vivo calcium imaging, we show consistent neural activity in the honeybee lateral horn upon stimulation with both floral volatiles and social pheromones. Recordings reveal odor-specific maps in this brain region as stimulations with the same odorant elicit more similar spatial activity patterns than stimulations with different odorants. Odor-similarity relationships are mostly conserved between antennal lobe and lateral horn, so that odor maps recorded in the lateral horn allow predicting bees' behavioral responses to floral odorants. In addition, a clear segregation of odorants based on pheromone type is found in both structures. The lateral horn thus contains an odor-specific map with distinct representations for the different bee pheromones, a prerequisite for eliciting specific behaviors.
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