Dynamics of glomerular coding in the olfactory bulb

描述（由申请人提供）：这项研究的长期目标是了解嗅觉系统如何编码有关气味的信息。在嗅觉球中，感觉输入首先被处理，嗅觉信息被编码，至少部分是由神经活动的空间组织模式编码的。可视化嗅球肾小球输入的实验表明，这些空间模式也是时间动态的。肾小球感觉输入的时间模式是浓度依赖性的，气味特异性的，并且在动物中具有模式化。这一新发现对考虑球茎中的气味编码策略具有重要意义。提出的实验将研究肾小球活动的动态如何影响气味信息的编码和处理。实验将对受体神经元和二尖瓣细胞的活动进行成像，以1)表征在气味采样的时间过程中肾小球活动的模式如何变化，以及2)表征这些模式如何从感觉输入水平转化为二尖瓣细胞从球茎输出的水平。这些实验将提高我们对气味编码策略的理解，以及嗅球在形成这种编码中的作用。了解大脑如何编码和处理感觉信息对治疗嗅觉或其他感觉缺陷很重要。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term goal of this research is to understand how the olfactory system encodes information about odors. In the olfactory bulb, where sensory input is first processed, olfactory information is encoded, at least in part, by spatially organized patterns of neural activity. Experiments that visualize the input to olfactory bulb glomeruli have revealed that these spatial patterns are also temporally dynamic. Temporal patterns of sensory input to glomeruli are concentration-dependent, odor-specific, and stereotyped across animals. This novel finding has important implications for considering odor-coding strategies in the bulb. The proposed experiments will investigate how the dynamics of glomerular activity shape how odor information is encoded and processed. The experiments will image activity in receptor neurons and mitral cells to 1) characterize how patterns of glomerular activity change during the time-course of odor sampling, and 2) characterize how these patterns are transformed from the level of sensory input to the level of mitral cell output from the bulb. The experiments should improve our understanding of odor coding strategies, and the role of the olfactory bulb in shaping this code. Understanding how the brain encodes and processes sensory information could be important in the treatment of olfactory or other sensory deficits.