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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Odor Coding by Modules of Coherent Mitral/Tufted Cells in the Vertebrate Olfactory Bulb
Contributor:
Chen, Tsai-Wen;
Lin, Bei-Jung;
Schild, Detlev;
Reed, Randall R.
Published:
National Academy of Sciences, 2009
Published in:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106 (2009) 7, Seite 2401-2406
Language:
English
ISSN:
0027-8424
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
Odor representation in the olfactory bulb (OB) undergoes a transformation from a combinatorial glomerular map to a distributed mitral/tufted (M/T) cell code. To understand this transformation, we analyzed the odor representation in large populations of individual M/T cells in the Xenopus OB. The spontaneous [Ca²⁺] activities of M/T cells appeared to be irregular, but there were groups of spatially distributed neurons showing synchronized [Ca²⁺] activities. These neurons were always connected to the same glomerulus. Odorants elicited complex spatiotemporal response patterns in M/T cells where nearby neurons generally showed little correlation. But the responses of neurons connected to the same glomerulus were virtually identical, irrespective of whether the responses were excitatory or inhibitory, and independent of the distance between them. Synchronous neurons received correlated EPSCs and were coupled by electrical conductances that could account for the correlated responses. Thus, at the output stage of the OB, odors are represented by modules of distributed and synchronous M/T cells associated with the same glomeruli. This allows for parallel input to higher brain centers.