Spatial Receptive Fields for Odor Localization

Animals rely on olfaction to navigate through complex olfactory landscapes, but the mechanisms that allow an animal to encode the spatial structure of an odorous environment remain unclear. To acquire information about the spatial distribution of an odorant, animals may rely on bilateral olfactory organs and compare side differences of odor intensity and timing [1-6] or may perform spatial and temporal signal integration of subsequent samplings [7]. The American cockroach can efficiently locate a source of sex pheromone even after the removal of one antenna, suggesting that bilateral comparison is not a prerequisite for odor localization in this species [8, 9]. Cognate olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) originating from different locations on the flagellum, but bearing the same olfactory receptor, converge onto the same glomerulus within the antennal lobe, which is thought to result in a loss of spatial information. Here, we identified 12 types of pheromone-responsive projection neurons (PNs), each with spatially tuned receptive field. The combination of (1) the antennotopic organization of OSNs terminals and (2) the stereotyped compartmentalization of PNs' dendritic arborization within the macroglomerulus (MG), allows encoding the spatial position of the pheromone. Furthermore, each PN type innervates a different compartment of the mushroom body, providing the means for encoding spatial olfactory information along the olfactory circuit. Finally, MG PNs exhibit both excitatory and inhibitory spatial receptive fields and modulate their responses based on changes in stimulus geometry. In conclusion, we propose a mechanism for encoding information on the spatial distribution of a pheromone, expanding both our understanding of odor coding and of the strategies insects adopt to localize a sexual mate.