Abstract
Splitting sensory information into parallel pathways is a common strategy in sensory systems. Yet, how circuits in these parallel pathways are composed to maintain or even enhance the encoding of specific stimulus features is poorly understood. Here, we have investigated the parallel pathways formed by mitral and tufted cells of the olfactory system in mice and characterized the emergence of feature selectivity in these cell types via distinct lateral inhibitory circuits. We find differences in activity-dependent lateral inhibition between mitral and tufted cells that likely reflect newly described differences in the activation of deep and superficial granule cells. Simulations show that these circuit-level differences allow mitral and tufted cells to best discriminate odors in separate concentration ranges, indicating that segregating information about different ranges of stimulus intensity may be an important function of these parallel sensory pathways.
Highlights
Brain sensory systems use parallel pathways to encode different components of sensory information
The peak amplitude of early inhibition was larger in MCs than in tufted cells (TCs) (Figure 1e), while the charge transferred of early phase inhibition was not significantly different (Figure 1f)
We find that differences in activity-dependent lateral inhibition (ADLI) selectively reduce intermediate firing rates in MCs and low firing rates in TCs
Summary
Brain sensory systems use parallel pathways to encode different components of sensory information. TCs respond to lower odor concentrations than MCs (Igarashi et al, 2012; Kikuta et al, 2013), suggesting that TCs are involved in processing near-threshold stimuli. Consistent with this notion of parallel pathways, MCs and TCs project their axons to many non-overlapping regions (Nagayama et al, 2010; Igarashi et al, 2012).
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