Differences in peripheral sensory input to the olfactory bulb between male and female mice.
Differences in peripheral sensory input to the olfactory bulb between male and female mice.
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DOI：
10.1038/srep45851
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发表时间：
2017-04-26
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
McGann JP
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kass MD;Czarnecki LA;Moberly AH;McGann JP
雌性哺乳动物通常比雄性具有更优越的嗅觉，但这种差异的生物学基础尚不清楚。在这里，我们展示了嗅觉感觉神经元（OSN）对气味剂的性别二态性神经编码，嗅觉感觉神经元是与鼻子中的气味分子物理接触并向大脑嗅球提供初始感觉输入的初级感觉神经元。我们进行了体内光学神经生理学，以观察未操作（性腺完整）的雌性成年小鼠中气味诱发的 OSN 突触输出到嗅球肾小球的情况，结果发现，与雄性相比，雌性中气味的呈现在更广泛的 OSN 上引发了更快速的 OSN 信号传导。这些时空差异增强了女性与男性在刺激呈现期间化学相关气味的神经表征之间的对比。去除循环中的性激素会使这些信号在女性中变慢且难以辨别，而在男性中它们变得更快且更容易辨别，这表明性腺激素在影响男性和女性嗅觉功能方面发挥着相反的作用。这些结果表明，著名的嗅觉能力性别差异可能起源于初级感觉神经元，并表明外周嗅觉系统的激素调节可能是男性和女性体验嗅觉世界方式差异的基础。
Female mammals generally have a superior sense of smell than males, but the biological basis of this difference is unknown. Here, we demonstrate sexually dimorphic neural coding of odorants by olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs), primary sensory neurons that physically contact odor molecules in the nose and provide the initial sensory input to the brain’s olfactory bulb. We performed in vivo optical neurophysiology to visualize odorant-evoked OSN synaptic output into olfactory bub glomeruli in unmanipulated (gonad-intact) adult mice from both sexes, and found that in females odorant presentation evoked more rapid OSN signaling over a broader range of OSNs than in males. These spatiotemporal differences enhanced the contrast between the neural representations of chemically related odorants in females compared to males during stimulus presentation. Removing circulating sex hormones makes these signals slower and less discriminable in females, while in males they become faster and more discriminable, suggesting opposite roles for gonadal hormones in influencing male and female olfactory function. These results demonstrate that the famous sex difference in olfactory abilities likely originates in the primary sensory neurons, and suggest that hormonal modulation of the peripheral olfactory system could underlie differences in how males and females experience the olfactory world.