Original Research Article
Reconstructing the population activity of olfactory output neurons that innervate identifiable processing units
Shigehiro Namiki 1, 2, 3 and Ryohei Kanzaki 2, 3*
1 Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan
2 Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan
3 Department of Mechano-Informatics , Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan
2 Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan
3 Department of Mechano-Informatics , Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan
We investigated the functional organization of the moth antennal lobe (AL), the primary olfactory network, using in vivo electrophysiological recordings and anatomical identification. The moth AL contains about 60 processing units called glomeruli that are identifiable from one animal to another. We were able to monitor the output information of the AL by recording the activity of a population of output neurons, each of which innervated a single glomerulus. Using compiled intracellular recordings and staining data from different animals, we mapped the odor-evoked dynamics on a digital atlas of the AL and geometrically reconstructed the population activity. We examined the quantitative relationship between the similarity of olfactory responses and the anatomical distance between glomeruli. Globally, the olfactory response profile was independent of the anatomical distance, although some local features were present.
Keywords: digital atlas, glomerulus, invertebrate, microelectrode, neurogeometry, neuroinformatics
Copyright: © 2008 Namiki and Kanzaki. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
*Correspondence: Ryohei Kanzaki, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Komaba 4-6-1 Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8904, Japan. e-mail: kanzaki@rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp or Shigehiro Namiki. e-mail: namiki@brain.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Citation: Namiki S and Kanzaki R (2008) Reconstructing the population activity of olfactory output neurons that innervate identifiable processing units. Front. Neural Circuits (2008) 2:1. doi:10.3389/neuro.04.001.2008
Received: 18 February 2008; paper pending published: 24 April 2008; accepted: 30 May 2008; published online: 12 June 2008.
Edited by:
Gilles Laurent, California Institute of Technology, USA
Reviewed by:
Peter Kloppenburg, University of Cologne, Germany
Rafael Yuste, Columbia University, USA
Rafael Yuste, Columbia University, USA
*Correspondence: Ryohei Kanzaki, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Komaba 4-6-1 Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8904, Japan. e-mail: kanzaki@rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp or Shigehiro Namiki. e-mail: namiki@brain.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp
