小柯机器人

快速的气味动态在嗅觉系统中编码并指导行为
2021-05-07 18:03

英国弗朗西斯·克里克研究所Andreas T. Schaefer课题组发现,快速的气味动态在嗅觉系统中编码并指导行为。这一研究成果于2021年5月5日在线发表在国际学术期刊《自然》上。

研究人员发现,十毫秒的气味脉冲模式在嗅觉受体神经元中产生不同的响应。在操作性条件实验中,小鼠以高达40 Hz的频率区分了快速波动的气味的时间相关性。在成像和电生理记录中,小鼠可以轻松地从僧帽细胞和房饰细胞(嗅球的输出神经元)的活动中提取此类相关信息。此外,气味浓度的时间相关性能够可靠地预测在空气流通复杂的自然环境中气味源是来自同一来源还是来自不同来源。

对小鼠进行此类任务训练并使用合成的相关刺激物以不同频率进行探测的实验表明,小鼠可以利用气味的时间结构来提取有关空间的信息。因此,哺乳动物的嗅觉系统能够获得气味刺激中出乎意料的快速时间特征。通过从时间气味动态中提取有关空间的信息,这赋予了动物克服关键行为挑战的能力,例如气味源分离,物-地隔离和气味定位。

据了解,气味在湍急的羽状流中运输,从而导致浓度的迅速波动,其中包含有关嗅觉情况的丰富信息,例如气味源的组成和位置。但是,尚不清楚哺乳动物的嗅觉系统是否可以使用潜在的时间结构来提取有关环境的信息。

附:英文原文

Title: Fast odour dynamics are encoded in the olfactory system and guide behaviour

Author: Tobias Ackels, Andrew Erskine, Debanjan Dasgupta, Alina Cristina Marin, Tom P. A. Warner, Sina Tootoonian, Izumi Fukunaga, Julia J. Harris, Andreas T. Schaefer

Issue&Volume: 2021-05-05

Abstract: Odours are transported in turbulent plumes, which result in rapid concentration fluctuations1,2 that contain rich information about the olfactory scenery, such as the composition and location of an odour source2,3,4. However, it is unclear whether the mammalian olfactory system can use the underlying temporal structure to extract information about the environment. Here we show that ten-millisecond odour pulse patterns produce distinct responses in olfactory receptor neurons. In operant conditioning experiments, mice discriminated temporal correlations of rapidly fluctuating odours at frequencies of up to 40 Hz. In imaging and electrophysiological recordings, such correlation information could be readily extracted from the activity of mitral and tufted cells—the output neurons of the olfactory bulb. Furthermore, temporal correlation of odour concentrations5 reliably predicted whether odorants emerged from the same or different sources in naturalistic environments with complex airflow. Experiments in which mice were trained on such tasks and probed using synthetic correlated stimuli at different frequencies suggest that mice can use the temporal structure of odours to extract information about space. Thus, the mammalian olfactory system has access to unexpectedly fast temporal features in odour stimuli. This endows animals with the capacity to overcome key behavioural challenges such as odour source separation5, figure–ground segregation6 and odour localization7 by extracting information about space from temporal odour dynamics.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03514-2

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03514-2

Nature:《自然》,创刊于1869年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团,最新IF:69.504
官方网址:http://www.nature.com/
投稿链接:http://www.nature.com/authors/submit_manuscript.html


本期文章:《自然》:Online/在线发表

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