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Free keywords:
Action Potentials
Animals
Drosophila/anatomy & histology/*physiology
Excitatory Postsynaptic Potentials
GABA Antagonists/pharmacology
GABA-A Receptor Antagonists
Nervous System Physiological Phenomena
Neural Inhibition
Neurons, Afferent/*physiology
*Odorants
Olfactory Pathways
Olfactory Receptor Neurons/*physiology
Patch-Clamp Techniques
Picrotoxin/pharmacology
Receptors, GABA-A/metabolism
Sense Organs/physiology
Smell/*physiology
Synapses/physiology
Abstract:
Molecular genetics has revealed a precise stereotypy in the projection of primary olfactory sensory neurons onto secondary neurons. A major challenge is to understand how this mapping translates into odor responses in these second-order neurons. We investigated this question in Drosophila using whole-cell recordings in vivo. We observe that monomolecular odors generally elicit responses in large ensembles of antennal lobe neurons. Comparison of odor-evoked activity from afferents and postsynaptic neurons in the same glomerulus revealed that second-order neurons display broader tuning and more complex responses than their primary afferents. This indicates a major transformation of odor representations, implicating lateral interactions within the antennal lobe.
