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Nonassociative plasticity alters competitive interactions among mixture components in early olfactory processing.

Fernando F Locatelli¹, Patricia C Fernandez, Francis Villareal

¹School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, PO Box 874501, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.

The European Journal of Neuroscience

|November 22, 2012

Summary

Unreinforced odor exposure alters honey bee olfactory processing. Nonassociative plasticity shifts neural and perceptual responses to odor mixtures, making them resemble familiar components.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Olfactory system
Honey bee research

Background:

Experience-dependent plasticity is crucial for early olfactory processing.
Mechanisms and functions of plasticity in olfactory neural networks remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

Investigate nonassociative plasticity in the honey bee antennal lobe.
Determine how odor exposure affects neural and perceptual responses to odor mixtures.

Main Methods:

Calcium imaging of odor-elicited neural activity in honey bee antennal lobe output neurons.
Behavioral analyses of odor perception following unreinforced odor exposure.
Computational modeling to identify synaptic plasticity targets.

Main Results:

Unreinforced exposure to single odors did not alter responses to pure odors.
Exposure to one odor component (A) shifted neural responses to an odor mixture (A+X) towards the response of the other component (X).
Behaviorally, exposure to odor A made the mixture perceptually more similar to odor X.

Conclusions:

Nonassociative plasticity modifies olfactory neural networks, impacting competitive interactions within odor mixtures.
Hebbian modification of inhibitory synapses in the antennal lobe likely underlies these plasticity effects.
The antennal lobe may filter olfactory information based on task relevance.