Dynamics of glomerular coding in the olfactory bulb

描述（由申请人提供）：本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。在嗅球中，感觉输入首先被处理，嗅觉信息被编码，至少部分地，由神经活动的空间组织模式。将嗅球小球的输入可视化的实验揭示了这些空间模式也是时间动态的。感觉输入肾小球的时间模式是浓度依赖性的，气味特异性的，在动物中是定型的。这一新的发现对于考虑灯泡中的气味编码策略具有重要意义。拟议的实验将研究肾小球活动的动态如何塑造气味信息的编码和处理。这些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的水平转化为来自灯泡的二尖瓣细胞输出的水平。这些实验应该可以提高我们对气味编码策略的理解，以及嗅球在形成这种代码中的作用。了解大脑如何编码和处理感觉信息对于嗅觉或其他感觉缺陷的治疗可能很重要。

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.