A Nose for Seizures: A Potential Role for Olfaction in the Co-Morbidity of Depression and Epilepsy?

Biomimetic integrated olfactory sensory and olfactory bulb systems in vitro based on a chip

A variety of mammalian or insect behaviors rely on the recognition of relevant odor stimuli. The olfactory system detects and translates complex olfactory stimuli (odors) through the unique and reproducible dynamic ensembles of neuronal activities. This process is involved in various types of neurons of olfactory parts, thereby encoding olfactory information or predicting progression in some neuropsychiatric diseases. In this paper, we constructed a biomimetic model including olfactory sensing system and olfactory bulb processing system to map olfactory-associated ensembles of neuronal activity. The olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) and olfactory bulb (OB) neurons were primarily cultured and the immunofluorescence images were performed to identify the types of neurons. Diacetyl solution was used as an odor stimulus, and the spike bursts and random spike firing patterns of concentration-dependent excitatory responses were obtained from the ORNs network. The spike waveform and feature parameters were extracted including the spike number and interval in per burst to program the stimulation unit and sequences. The sequences containing odor information were applied to the OB neuronal network for the simulation of the primary olfactory processing. The response pattern and change rule of the OB neuronal network were consistent with the OB neurons affected by the neurotransmitter, which is the carrier of olfactory information transmission in vivo. This biomimetic integrated olfactory sensory and processing system can serve as a novel model for studying the physiological and pathological mechanisms of olfaction, and the pharmacological application in vitro.