Nature Neuroscience

Chronic

Mouse

four C57BL/6J mice and three OMP- ChannelRhodopsin-YFP heterozygous mice that had a targeted insertion in the OMP locus

Olfactory Bulb

Mitral/tufted cell

Tetrode/Polytrode (clustered units)

LFP

a2x2-tet-3mm-150-150-312(F16), a4x8-5mm-150-200-312(F32), H16_21mm

In terrestrial vertebrates, sniffing controls odorant access to receptors, and therefore sets the timescale of olfactory stimuli. We found that odorants evoked precisely sniff-locked activity in mitral/tufted cells in the olfactory bulb of awake mouse. The trial-to-trial response jitter averaged 12 ms, a precision comparable to other sensory systems. Individual cells expressed odor-specific temporal patterns of activity and, across the population, onset times tiled the duration of the sniff cycle. Responses were more tightly time-locked to the sniff phase than to the time after inhalation onset. The spikes of single neurons carried sufficient information to discriminate odors. In addition, precise locking to sniff phase may facilitate ensemble coding by making synchrony relationships across neurons robust to variation in sniff rate. The temporal specificity of mitral/tufted cell output provides a potentially rich source of information for downstream olfactory areas.

Shusterman, Roman et al. “Precise olfactory responses tile the sniff cycle.” Nature Neuroscience 14.8 (2011) : 1039-1044.

07/17/2011

United States

Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute