Dataset Information

Parallel mitral and tufted cell pathways route distinct odor information to different targets in the olfactory cortex.

ABSTRACT: Odor signals are conveyed from the olfactory bulb to the olfactory cortex (OC) by mitral cells (MCs) and tufted cells (TCs). However, whether and how the two types of projection neuron differ in function and axonal connectivity is still poorly understood. Odor responses and axonal projection patterns were compared between MCs and TCs in mice by visualizing axons of electrophysiologically identified single neurons. TCs demonstrated shorter onset latency for reliable responses than MCs. The shorter latency response of TCs was maintained in a wide range of odor concentrations, whereas MCs responded only to strong signals. Furthermore, individual TCs projected densely to focal targets only in anterior areas of the OC, whereas individual MCs dispersedly projected to all OC areas. Surprisingly, in anterior OC areas, the two cell types projected to segregated subareas. These results suggest that MCs and TCs transmit temporally distinct odor information to different OC targets.

SUBMITTER: Igarashi KM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3636718 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Parallel mitral and tufted cell pathways route distinct odor information to different targets in the olfactory cortex.

Igarashi Kei M KM Ieki Nao N An Myungho M Yamaguchi Yukie Y Nagayama Shin S Kobayakawa Ko K Kobayakawa Reiko R Tanifuji Manabu M Sakano Hitoshi H Chen Wei R WR Mori Kensaku K

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 20120601 23

Odor signals are conveyed from the olfactory bulb to the olfactory cortex (OC) by mitral cells (MCs) and tufted cells (TCs). However, whether and how the two types of projection neuron differ in function and axonal connectivity is still poorly understood. Odor responses and axonal projection patterns were compared between MCs and TCs in mice by visualizing axons of electrophysiologically identified single neurons. TCs demonstrated shorter onset latency for reliable responses than MCs. The shorte ...[more]

PMID: 22674272

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Project description:Although mice locate resources using turbulent airborne odor plumes, the stochasticity and intermittency of fluctuating plumes create challenges for interpreting odor cues in natural environments. Population activity within the olfactory bulb (OB) is thought to process this complex spatial and temporal information, but how plume dynamics impact odor representation in this early stage of the mouse olfactory system is unknown. Limitations in odor detection technology have made it difficult to measure plume fluctuations while simultaneously recording from the mouse's brain. Thus, previous studies have measured OB activity following controlled odor pulses of varying profiles or frequencies, but this approach only captures a subset of features found within olfactory plumes. Adequately sampling this feature space is difficult given a lack of knowledge regarding which features the brain extracts during exposure to natural olfactory scenes. Here we measured OB responses to naturally fluctuating odor plumes using a miniature, adapted odor sensor combined with wide-field GCaMP6f signaling from the dendrites of mitral and tufted (MT) cells imaged in olfactory glomeruli of head-fixed mice. We precisely tracked plume dynamics and imaged glomerular responses to this fluctuating input, while varying flow conditions across a range of ethologically-relevant values. We found that a consistent portion of MT activity in glomeruli follows odor concentration dynamics, and the strongest responding glomeruli are the best at following fluctuations within odor plumes. Further, the reliability and average response magnitude of glomerular populations of MT cells are affected by the flow condition in which the animal samples the plume, with the fidelity of plume following by MT cells increasing in conditions of higher flow velocity where odor dynamics result in intermittent whiffs of stronger concentration. Thus, the flow environment in which an animal encounters an odor has a large-scale impact on the temporal representation of an odor plume in the OB. Additionally, across flow conditions odor dynamics are a major driver of activity in many glomerular networks. Taken together, these data demonstrate that plume dynamics structure olfactory representations in the first stage of odor processing in the mouse olfactory system.

Dataset Information

Parallel mitral and tufted cell pathways route distinct odor information to different targets in the olfactory cortex.

Publications

Parallel mitral and tufted cell pathways route distinct odor information to different targets in the olfactory cortex.

Similar Datasets

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