Title: | Peripheral and central olfactory tuning in a moth |
Address: | "National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, 35 Lincoln Drive, Rm 3A-102, MSC 3715, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA" |
ISSN/ISBN: | 1464-3553 (Electronic) 0379-864X (Print) 0379-864X (Linking) |
Abstract: | "Animals can be innately attracted to certain odorants. Because these attractants are particularly salient, they might be expected to induce relatively strong responses throughout the olfactory pathway, helping animals detect the most relevant odors but limiting flexibility to respond to other odors. Alternatively, specific neural wiring might link innately preferred odors to appropriate behaviors without a need for intensity biases. How nonpheromonal attractants are processed by the general olfactory system remains largely unknown. In the moth Manduca sexta, we studied this with a set of innately preferred host plant odors and other, neutral odors. Electroantennogram recordings showed that, as a population, olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) did not respond with greater intensity to host plant odors, and further local field potential recordings showed that no specific amplification of signals induced by host plant odors occurred between the first olfactory center and the second. Moreover, when odorants were mutually diluted to elicit equally intense output from the ORNs, moths were able to learn to associate all tested odorants equally well with food reward. Together, these results suggest that, although nonpheromonal host plant odors activate broadly distributed responses, they may be linked to attractive behaviors mainly through specific wiring in the brain" |
Keywords: | Action Potentials Animals Arthropod Antennae/drug effects/*physiology Brain/drug effects/physiology Feeding Behavior/drug effects/physiology Female Manduca/drug effects/*physiology Odorants Olfactory Pathways/drug effects/physiology Olfactory Receptor Neu; |
Notes: | "MedlineOng, Rose C Stopfer, Mark eng Intramural NIH HHS/ Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural England 2012/03/01 Chem Senses. 2012 Jun; 37(5):455-61. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjr127. Epub 2012 Feb 23" |