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Petelski I, Günzel Y, Sayin S, Kraus S, Couzin-Fuchs E. Synergistic olfactory processing for social plasticity in desert locusts. Nat Commun 2024; 15:5476. [PMID: 38942759 PMCID: PMC11213921 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49719-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/09/2024] [Accepted: 06/11/2024] [Indexed: 06/30/2024] Open
Abstract
Desert locust plagues threaten the food security of millions. Central to their formation is crowding-induced plasticity, with social phenotypes changing from cryptic (solitarious) to swarming (gregarious). Here, we elucidate the implications of this transition on foraging decisions and corresponding neural circuits. We use behavioral experiments and Bayesian modeling to decompose the multi-modal facets of foraging, revealing olfactory social cues as critical. To this end, we investigate how corresponding odors are encoded in the locust olfactory system using in-vivo calcium imaging. We discover crowding-dependent synergistic interactions between food-related and social odors distributed across stable combinatorial response maps. The observed synergy was specific to the gregarious phase and manifested in distinct odor response motifs. Our results suggest a crowding-induced modulation of the locust olfactory system that enhances food detection in swarms. Overall, we demonstrate how linking sensory adaptations to behaviorally relevant tasks can improve our understanding of social modulation in non-model organisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Inga Petelski
- International Max Planck Research School for Quantitative Behavior, Ecology and Evolution from lab to field, 78464, Konstanz, Germany
- Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, 78464, Konstanz, Germany
- Department of Collective Behavior, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, 78464, Konstanz, Germany
| | - Yannick Günzel
- International Max Planck Research School for Quantitative Behavior, Ecology and Evolution from lab to field, 78464, Konstanz, Germany.
- Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, 78464, Konstanz, Germany.
- Department of Collective Behavior, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, 78464, Konstanz, Germany.
- Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, 78464, Konstanz, Germany.
| | - Sercan Sayin
- Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, 78464, Konstanz, Germany
- Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, 78464, Konstanz, Germany
| | - Susanne Kraus
- Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, 78464, Konstanz, Germany
| | - Einat Couzin-Fuchs
- Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, 78464, Konstanz, Germany.
- Department of Collective Behavior, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, 78464, Konstanz, Germany.
- Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, 78464, Konstanz, Germany.
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Gupta P, Chandak R, Debnath A, Traner M, Watson BM, Huang H, Derami HG, Baldi H, Chakrabartty S, Raman B, Singamaneni S. Augmenting insect olfaction performance through nano-neuromodulation. NATURE NANOTECHNOLOGY 2024; 19:677-687. [PMID: 38272973 DOI: 10.1038/s41565-023-01592-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/22/2023] [Accepted: 12/08/2023] [Indexed: 01/27/2024]
Abstract
Biological olfactory systems are highly sensitive and selective, often outperforming engineered chemical sensors in highly complex and dynamic environments. As a result, there is much interest in using biological systems to build sensors. However, approaches to read-out information from biological systems, especially neural signals, tend to be suboptimal due to the number of electrodes that can be used and where these can be placed. Here we aim to overcome this suboptimality in neural information read-out by using a nano-enabled neuromodulation strategy to augment insect olfaction-based chemical sensors. By harnessing the photothermal properties of nanostructures and releasing a select neuromodulator on demand, we show that the odour-evoked response from the interrogated regions of the insect olfactory system can not only be enhanced but can also improve odour identification.
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Affiliation(s)
- Prashant Gupta
- Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and Institute of Materials Science and Engineering, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA
| | - Rishabh Chandak
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA
| | - Avishek Debnath
- Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and Institute of Materials Science and Engineering, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA
| | - Michael Traner
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA
| | - Brendan M Watson
- Department of Emergency Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA
| | - Hengbo Huang
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA
- Department of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA
| | - Hamed Gholami Derami
- Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and Institute of Materials Science and Engineering, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA
| | - Harsh Baldi
- Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and Institute of Materials Science and Engineering, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA
| | - Shantanu Chakrabartty
- Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA
| | - Baranidharan Raman
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA.
| | - Srikanth Singamaneni
- Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and Institute of Materials Science and Engineering, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA.
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3
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Ma L, Patel M. Mechanism of carbachol-induced 40 Hz gamma oscillations and the effects of NMDA activation on oscillatory dynamics in a model of the CA3 subfield of the hippocampus. J Theor Biol 2022; 548:111200. [PMID: 35716721 DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2022.111200] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/12/2022] [Revised: 05/26/2022] [Accepted: 06/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
Gamma oscillations are a prominent feature of various neural systems, including the CA3 subfield of the hippocampus. In CA3, in vitro carbachol application induces ∼40 Hz gamma oscillations in the network of glutamatergic excitatory pyramidal neurons (PNs) and local GABAergic inhibitory neurons (INs). Activation of NMDA receptors within CA3 leads to an increase in the frequency of carbachol-induced oscillations to ∼60 Hz, a broadening of the distribution of individual oscillation cycle frequencies, and a decrease in the time lag between PN and IN spike bursts. In this work, we develop a biophysical integrate-and-fire model of the CA3 subfield, we show that the dynamics of our model are in concordance with physiological observations, and we provide computational support for the hypothesis that the 'E-I' mechanism is responsible for the emergence of ∼40 Hz gamma oscillations in the absence of NMDA activation. We then incorporate NMDA receptors into our CA3 model, and we show that our model exhibits the increase in gamma oscillation frequency, broadening of the cycle frequency distribution, and decrease in the time lag between PN and IN spike bursts observed experimentally. Remarkably, we find an inverse relationship in our model between the net NMDA current delivered to PNs and INs in an oscillation cycle and cycle frequency. Furthermore, we find a disparate effect of NMDA receptors on PNs versus INs - we show that NMDA receptors on INs tend to increase oscillation frequency, while NMDA receptors on PNs tend to slightly decrease or not affect oscillation frequency. We find that these observations can be explained if NMDA activity above a threshold level causes a shift in the mechanism underlying gamma oscillations; in the absence of NMDA receptors, the 'E-I' mechanism is primarily responsible for the generation of gamma oscillations (at 40 Hz), while when NMDA receptors are active, the mechanism of gamma oscillations shifts to the 'I-I' mechanism, and we argue that within the 'I-I' regime (which displays a higher baseline oscillation frequency of ∼60 Hz), slight changes in the level of NMDA activity are inversely related to cycle frequency.
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Affiliation(s)
- Linda Ma
- Department of Mathematics, William & Mary, United States.
| | - Mainak Patel
- Department of Mathematics, William & Mary, United States.
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Olfactory encoding within the insect antennal lobe: The emergence and role of higher order temporal correlations in the dynamics of antennal lobe spiking activity. J Theor Biol 2021; 522:110700. [PMID: 33819477 DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2021.110700] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/26/2020] [Revised: 03/20/2021] [Accepted: 03/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
In this review, we focus on the antennal lobe (AL) of three insect species - the fruit fly, sphinx moth, and locust. We first review the experimentally elucidated anatomy and physiology of the early olfactory system of each species; empirical studies of AL activity, however, often focus on assessing firing rates (averaged over time scales of about 100 ms), and hence the AL odor code is often analyzed in terms of a temporally evolving vector of firing rates. However, such a perspective necessarily misses the possibility of higher order temporal correlations in spiking activity within a single cell and across multiple cells over shorter time scales (of about 10 ms). Hence, we then review our prior theoretical work, where we constructed biophysically detailed, species-specific AL models within the fly, moth, and locust, finding that in each case higher order temporal correlations in spiking naturally emerge from model dynamics (i.e., without a prioriincorporation of elements designed to produce correlated activity). We therefore use our theoretical work to argue the perspective that temporal correlations in spiking over short time scales, which have received little experimental attention to-date, may provide valuable coding dimensions (complementing the coding dimensions provided by the vector of firing rates) that nature has exploited in the encoding of odors within the AL. We further argue that, if the AL does indeed utilize temporally correlated activity to represent odor information, such an odor code could be naturally and easily deciphered within the Mushroom Body.
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Network mechanism for insect olfaction. Cogn Neurodyn 2021; 15:103-129. [PMID: 33786083 DOI: 10.1007/s11571-020-09640-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/02/2020] [Revised: 08/25/2020] [Accepted: 09/30/2020] [Indexed: 10/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Early olfactory pathway responses to the presentation of an odor exhibit remarkably similar dynamical behavior across phyla from insects to mammals, and frequently involve transitions among quiescence, collective network oscillations, and asynchronous firing. We hypothesize that the time scales of fast excitation and fast and slow inhibition present in these networks may be the essential element underlying this similar behavior, and design an idealized, conductance-based integrate-and-fire model to verify this hypothesis via numerical simulations. To better understand the mathematical structure underlying the common dynamical behavior across species, we derive a firing-rate model and use it to extract a slow passage through a saddle-node-on-an-invariant-circle bifurcation structure. We expect this bifurcation structure to provide new insights into the understanding of the dynamical behavior of neuronal assemblies and that a similar structure can be found in other sensory systems.
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Analysis of feedforward mechanisms of multiwhisker receptive field generation in a model of the rat barrel cortex. J Theor Biol 2019; 477:51-62. [PMID: 31201881 DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2019.06.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/27/2019] [Revised: 04/16/2019] [Accepted: 06/11/2019] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
There is substantial anatomical segregation in the organization of the rodent barrel system - each whisker on the mystacial pad sends input to TC cells within a dedicated thalamic barreloid, which in turn innervates a corresponding cortical barrel, and RS cells within a barrel respond primarily to deflections of the corresponding whisker at the beginning of the dedicated transmission line (the principal whisker, PW). However, it is also well-established that barrel cells exhibit multiwhisker receptive fields (RFs), and display lower amplitude, longer latency responses to deflections of non-PWs (or adjacent whiskers, AWs). There is considerable controversy regarding the origin of such multiwhisker RFs; three possibilities include: (i) TC cells within a barreloid respond to multiple whiskers, and barrel RS cells simply inherit multiwhisker responses from their aligned barreloid; (ii) TC cells respond only to the PW, but individual barreloids innervate multiple barrels; (iii) multiwhisker responses of barrel cells arise from lateral corticocortical (barrel-to-barrel) synaptic transmission. Ablation studies attempting to pinpoint the source of RS cell AW responses are often contradictory (though experimental work tends to suggest possibilities (i) or (iii) to be most plausible), and hence it is important to carefully evaluate these hypotheses in terms of available physiological data on barreloid and barrel response dynamics. In this work, I employ a biologically detailed model of the rat barrel cortex to evaluate possibility (i), and I show that, within the model, hypothesis (i) is capable of explaining a broad range of the available physiological data on responses to single (PW or AW) deflections and paired whisker deflections (AW deflection followed by PW deflection), as well as the dependence of such responses on the angular direction of whisker deflection. In particular, the model shows that barrel RS cells can exhibit AW direction tuning despite the fact that barreloid to barrel wiring has no systematic dependence on the AW direction preference of TC cells. Future modeling work will examine the other possibilities for the generation of multiwhisker RS cell RFs, and compare and contrast the different possible mechanisms within the context of available experimental data.
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Patel MJ. Effects of Adaptation on Discrimination of Whisker Deflection Velocity and Angular Direction in a Model of the Barrel Cortex. Front Comput Neurosci 2018; 12:45. [PMID: 29946250 PMCID: PMC6006271 DOI: 10.3389/fncom.2018.00045] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/13/2017] [Accepted: 05/25/2018] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Two important stimulus features represented within the rodent barrel cortex are velocity and angular direction of whisker deflection. Each cortical barrel receives information from thalamocortical (TC) cells that relay information from a single whisker, and TC input is decoded by barrel regular-spiking (RS) cells through a feedforward inhibitory architecture (with inhibition delivered by cortical fast-spiking or FS cells). TC cells encode deflection velocity through population synchrony, while deflection direction is encoded through the distribution of spike counts across the TC population. Barrel RS cells encode both deflection direction and velocity with spike rate, and are divided into functional domains by direction preference. Following repetitive whisker stimulation, system adaptation causes a weakening of synaptic inputs to RS cells and diminishes RS cell spike responses, though evidence suggests that stimulus discrimination may improve following adaptation. In this work, I construct a model of the TC, FS, and RS cells comprising a single barrel system—the model incorporates realistic synaptic connectivity and dynamics and simulates both angular direction (through the spatial pattern of TC activation) and velocity (through synchrony of the TC population spikes) of a deflection of the primary whisker, and I use the model to examine direction and velocity selectivity of barrel RS cells before and after adaptation. I find that velocity and direction selectivity of individual RS cells (measured over multiple trials) sharpens following adaptation, but stimulus discrimination using a simple linear classifier by the RS population response during a single trial (a more biologically meaningful measure than single cell discrimination over multiple trials) exhibits strikingly different behavior—velocity discrimination is similar both before and after adaptation, while direction classification improves substantially following adaptation. This is the first model, to my knowledge, that simulates both whisker deflection velocity and angular direction and examines the ability of the RS population response to pinpoint both stimulus features within the context of adaptation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mainak J Patel
- Department of Mathematics, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, United States
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8
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Liu R, Patel M, Joshi B. Encoding whisker deflection velocity within the rodent barrel cortex using phase-delayed inhibition. J Comput Neurosci 2014; 37:387-401. [DOI: 10.1007/s10827-014-0535-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/24/2014] [Revised: 09/23/2014] [Accepted: 09/26/2014] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
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Barranca VJ, Kovačič G, Zhou D, Cai D. Network dynamics for optimal compressive-sensing input-signal recovery. PHYSICAL REVIEW. E, STATISTICAL, NONLINEAR, AND SOFT MATTER PHYSICS 2014; 90:042908. [PMID: 25375568 DOI: 10.1103/physreve.90.042908] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/04/2014] [Indexed: 06/04/2023]
Abstract
By using compressive sensing (CS) theory, a broad class of static signals can be reconstructed through a sequence of very few measurements in the framework of a linear system. For networks with nonlinear and time-evolving dynamics, is it similarly possible to recover an unknown input signal from only a small number of network output measurements? We address this question for pulse-coupled networks and investigate the network dynamics necessary for successful input signal recovery. Determining the specific network characteristics that correspond to a minimal input reconstruction error, we are able to achieve high-quality signal reconstructions with few measurements of network output. Using various measures to characterize dynamical properties of network output, we determine that networks with highly variable and aperiodic output can successfully encode network input information with high fidelity and achieve the most accurate CS input reconstructions. For time-varying inputs, we also find that high-quality reconstructions are achievable by measuring network output over a relatively short time window. Even when network inputs change with time, the same optimal choice of network characteristics and corresponding dynamics apply as in the case of static inputs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Victor J Barranca
- Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York 10012, USA and NYUAD Institute, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
| | - Gregor Kovačič
- Mathematical Sciences Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180, USA
| | - Douglas Zhou
- Department of Mathematics, MOE-LSC, and Institute of Natural Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
| | - David Cai
- Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York 10012, USA and NYUAD Institute, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and Department of Mathematics, MOE-LSC, and Institute of Natural Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
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Patel MJ, Rangan AV, Cai D. Coding of odors by temporal binding within a model network of the locust antennal lobe. Front Comput Neurosci 2013; 7:50. [PMID: 23630495 PMCID: PMC3635028 DOI: 10.3389/fncom.2013.00050] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/30/2012] [Accepted: 04/09/2013] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The locust olfactory system interfaces with the external world through antennal receptor neurons (ORNs), which represent odors in a distributed, combinatorial manner. ORN axons bundle together to form the antennal nerve, which relays sensory information centrally to the antennal lobe (AL). Within the AL, an odor generates a dynamically evolving ensemble of active cells, leading to a stimulus-specific temporal progression of neuronal spiking. This experimental observation has led to the hypothesis that an odor is encoded within the AL by a dynamically evolving trajectory of projection neuron (PN) activity that can be decoded piecewise to ascertain odor identity. In order to study information coding within the locust AL, we developed a scaled-down model of the locust AL using Hodgkin-Huxley-type neurons and biologically realistic connectivity parameters and current components. Using our model, we examined correlations in the precise timing of spikes across multiple neurons, and our results suggest an alternative to the dynamic trajectory hypothesis. We propose that the dynamical interplay of fast and slow inhibition within the locust AL induces temporally stable correlations in the spiking activity of an odor-dependent neural subset, giving rise to a temporal binding code that allows rapid stimulus detection by downstream elements.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mainak J Patel
- Department of Mathematics, Duke University Durham, NC, USA
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Rangan AV. Functional roles for synaptic-depression within a model of the fly antennal lobe. PLoS Comput Biol 2012; 8:e1002622. [PMID: 22927802 PMCID: PMC3426607 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002622] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/06/2012] [Accepted: 06/11/2012] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Several experiments indicate that there exists substantial synaptic-depression at the synapses between olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) and neurons within the drosophila antenna lobe (AL). This synaptic-depression may be partly caused by vesicle-depletion, and partly caused by presynaptic-inhibition due to the activity of inhibitory local neurons within the AL. While it has been proposed that this synaptic-depression contributes to the nonlinear relationship between ORN and projection neuron (PN) firing-rates, the precise functional role of synaptic-depression at the ORN synapses is not yet fully understood. In this paper we propose two hypotheses linking the information-coding properties of the fly AL with the network mechanisms responsible for ORNAL synaptic-depression. Our first hypothesis is related to variance coding of ORN firing-rate information — once stimulation to the ORNs is sufficiently high to saturate glomerular responses, further stimulation of the ORNs increases the regularity of PN spiking activity while maintaining PN firing-rates. The second hypothesis proposes a tradeoff between spike-time reliability and coding-capacity governed by the relative contribution of vesicle-depletion and presynaptic-inhibition to ORNAL synaptic-depression. Synaptic-depression caused primarily by vesicle-depletion will give rise to a very reliable system, whereas an equivalent amount of synaptic-depression caused primarily by presynaptic-inhibition will give rise to a less reliable system that is more sensitive to small shifts in odor stimulation. These two hypotheses are substantiated by several small analyzable toy models of the fly AL, as well as a more physiologically realistic large-scale computational model of the fly AL involving glomerular channels. Understanding the intricacies of sensory processing is a major scientific challenge. In this paper we examine the early stages of the olfactory system of the fruit-fly. Many experiments have revealed a great deal regarding the architecture of this system, including the types of neurons within it, as well as the connections those neurons make amongst one another. In this paper we examine the potential dynamics produced by this neuronal network. Specifically, we construct a computational model of this early olfactory system and study the effects of synaptic-depression within this system. We find that the dynamics and coding properties of this system depend strongly on the strength, and sources of, synaptic-depression. This work has ramifications for understanding the coding properties of other insect olfactory systems, and perhaps even other sensory modalities in other animals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aaditya V Rangan
- Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America.
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