Elemental and configural olfactory coding by antennal lobe neurons of the honeybee (Apis mellifera).

ABSTRACT: When smelling an odorant mixture, olfactory systems can be analytical (i.e. extract information about the mixture elements) or synthetic (i.e. creating a configural percept of the mixture). Here, we studied elemental and configural mixture coding in olfactory neurons of the honeybee antennal lobe, local neurons in particular. We conducted intracellular recordings and stimulated with monomolecular odorants and their coherent or incoherent binary mixtures to reproduce a temporally dynamic environment. We found that about half of the neurons responded as 'elemental neurons', i.e. responses evoked by mixtures reflected the underlying feature information from one of the components. The other half responded as 'configural neurons', i.e. responses to mixtures were clearly different from responses

SUBMITTER: Meyer A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3283949 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature