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J Neurosci

Title:		Reliable sex and strain discrimination in the mouse vomeronasal organ and accessory olfactory bulb
Author(s):		Tolokh II; Fu X; Holy TE;
Address:		"Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA"
Journal Title:		J Neurosci
Year:		2013
Volume:		33
Issue:		34
Page Number:		13903 - 13913
DOI:		10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0037-13.2013
ISSN/ISBN:		1529-2401 (Electronic) 0270-6474 (Print) 0270-6474 (Linking)
Abstract:		"Animals modulate their courtship and territorial behaviors in response to olfactory cues produced by other animals. In rodents, detecting these cues is the primary role of the accessory olfactory system (AOS). We sought to systematically investigate the natural stimulus coding logic and robustness in neurons of the first two stages of accessory olfactory processing, the vomeronasal organ (VNO) and accessory olfactory bulb (AOB). We show that firing rate responses of just a few well-chosen mouse VNO or AOB neurons can be used to reliably encode both sex and strain of other mice from cues contained in urine. Additionally, we show that this population code can generalize to new concentrations of stimuli and appears to represent stimulus identity in terms of diverging paths in coding space. Together, the results indicate that firing rate code on the temporal order of seconds is sufficient for accurate classification of pheromonal patterns at different concentrations and may be used by AOS neural circuitry to discriminate among naturally occurring urine stimuli"
Keywords:		"Action Potentials/physiology Animals Discrimination, Psychological/*physiology Female Likelihood Functions Linear Models Male Mice Mice, Inbred BALB C Mice, Inbred CBA Neurons/*physiology Odorants Olfactory Bulb/*cytology/physiology Psychophysics *Sex Cha;"
Notes:		"MedlineTolokh, Illya I Fu, Xiaoyan Holy, Timothy E eng R01 NS068409/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ DC005964/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS/ NS068409/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ R01 DC005964/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS/ R01 DC010381/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS/ DC010381/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS/ Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't 2013/08/24 J Neurosci. 2013 Aug 21; 33(34):13903-13. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0037-13.2013"