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Odour-plume dynamics influence the brain's olfactory code

Nature volume 410, pages 466–470 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

The neural computations used to represent olfactory information in the brain have long been investigated1,2,3. Recent studies in the insect antennal lobe suggest that precise temporal and/or spatial patterns of activity underlie the recognition and discrimination of different odours3,4,5,6,7, and that these patterns may be strengthened by associative learning8,9. It remains unknown, however, whether these activity patterns persist when odour intensity varies rapidly and unpredictably, as often occurs in nature10,11. Here we show that with naturally intermittent odour stimulation, spike patterns recorded from moth antennal-lobe output neurons varied predictably with the fine-scale temporal dynamics and intensity of the odour. These data support the hypothesis that olfactory circuits compensate for contextual variations in the stimulus pattern with high temporal precision. The timing of output neuron activity is constantly modulated to reflect ongoing changes in stimulus intensity and dynamics that occur on a millisecond timescale.

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Figure 1: Mapping the dynamics of a natural odour plume.
Figure 2: Measurement of plume dynamics in flight.
Figure 3: Temporal patterns of spike discharges in olfactory projection neurons (PNs) are strongly dependent on the stimulus dynamics of a wind-borne pheromone plume.
Figure 4: Temporal analysis of stimulus-evoked PN activity reveals that odour identity is not encoded in the temporal structure of these responses.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Hannaford and M. Willis for help in constructing the small wind tunnel. This work was supported by United States Department of Agriculture (National Research Initiative), National Institutes of Health (National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders), and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Controlled Biological Systems).

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Author notes

  1. Neil J. Vickers

    Present address: Department of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84112, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arizona Research Laboratories Division of Neurobiology, The University of Arizona, PO Box 210077, Tucson, 85721, Arizona, USA

    Neil J. Vickers, Thomas A. Christensen & John G. Hildebrand

  2. Department of Entomology, Iowa State University, Ames, 50011, Iowa, USA

    Neil J. Vickers & Thomas C. Baker

Authors
  1. Neil J. Vickers
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  2. Thomas A. Christensen
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Correspondence to Neil J. Vickers.

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Vickers, N., Christensen, T., Baker, T. et al. Odour-plume dynamics influence the brain's olfactory code. Nature 410, 466–470 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35068559

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