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Animals
Grasshoppers/*physiology
Mechanoreceptors/*physiology
Models, Neurological
Nerve Net/physiology
Neurons/classification/*physiology
*Odorants
Oscillometry
Reaction Time
Receptors, GABA/physiology
Receptors, Nicotinic/physiology
Smell/*physiology
Synapses/*physiology
Synaptic Transmission/physiology
gamma-Aminobutyric Acid/pharmacology/physiology
Abstract:
Locust antennal lobe (AL) projection neurons (PNs) respond to olfactory stimuli with sequences of depolarizing and hyperpolarizing epochs, each lasting hundreds of milliseconds. A computer simulation of an AL network was used to test the hypothesis that slow inhibitory connections between local neurons (LNs) and PNs are responsible for temporal patterning. Activation of slow inhibitory receptors on PNs by the same GABAergic synapses that underlie fast oscillatory synchronization of PNs was sufficient to shape slow response modulations. This slow stimulus- and neuron-specific patterning of AL activity was resistant to blockade of fast inhibition. Fast and slow inhibitory mechanisms at synapses between LNs and PNs can thus form dynamical PN assemblies whose elements synchronize transiently and oscillate collectively, as observed not only in the locust AL, but also in the vertebrate olfactory bulb.
