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Olfactory coding

Precise timing

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 3, page 672 (2002)Cite this article

In insects, odours are detected by receptor neurons that project to the antennal lobe. Here, projection neurons (PNs) carry the signal on to the mushroom body, which has been implicated in olfactory learning in insects. In the mushroom body, PNs form synapses on Kenyon cells (KCs). Each PN contacts hundreds of KCs, and each KC receives inputs from many fewer PNs (an estimated 10–20).

The authors recorded the responses of PNs and KCs to various odours. They found that individual PNs responded strongly to a variety of odours, and that their responses had complex temporal patterns, often outlasting the stimulus, that were odour- and neuron-specific. Odour-evoked PN responses also showed global oscillations at around 20–30 Hz. KC responses, by contrast, were much more selective: each KC responded to very few odours, and their responses were brief (on average, just two action potentials).

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References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Perez-Orive, J. et al. Oscillations and sparsening of odor representations in the mushroom body. Science 297, 359–365 (2002)

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FURTHER READING

  1. Engel, A. K. et al. Dynamic predictions: oscillations and synchrony in top–down processing. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 2, 704–716 (2001)

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Authors
  1. Rachel Jones
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Jones, R. Precise timing. Nat Rev Neurosci 3, 672 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn927

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn927

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