Abstract
Olfactory stimuli are encountered across a wide range of odor concentrations in natural environments. Defining the neural computations that support concentration invariant odor perception, odor discrimination, and odor-background segmentation across a wide range of stimulus intensities remains an open question in the field. In principle, adaptation could allow the olfactory system to adjust sensory representations to the current stimulus conditions, a well-known process in other sensory systems. However, surprisingly little is known about how adaptation changes olfactory representations and affects perception. Here we review the current understanding of how adaptation impacts processing in the first two stages of the vertebrate olfactory system, olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs), and mitral/tufted cells.
Highlights
Adaptation modulates the input-output transformation of a neuron or brain region based upon the recent history of an organism’s sensory experience (Barlow, 1961; Wark et al, 2007; Whitmire and Stanley, 2016; Weber and Fairhall, 2019; Benda, 2021)
Combinatorial complexity is associated with the large repertoire of odorant receptors, which participate in odor coding when their sensitivity matches the stimulus concentration
Temporal complexity is related to the nature of the stimuli, as well as to the filtering function applied by respiration in breathing animals
Summary
Adaptation modulates the input-output transformation of a neuron or brain region based upon the recent history of an organism’s sensory experience (Barlow, 1961; Wark et al, 2007; Whitmire and Stanley, 2016; Weber and Fairhall, 2019; Benda, 2021). Interstimulus intervals of 330–1,000 ms, which corresponds to respiratory frequencies of 1–3 Hz, have been reported to induce substantial depression in vitro (Kurahashi and Menini, 1997; Leinders-Zufall et al, 1998; Zufall and Leinders-Zufall, 2000; Wachowiak et al, 2005), but similar rates only evoke minor effects in the activity measured from the glomeruli in vivo (Verhagen et al, 2007; Carey and Wachowiak, 2011) It is unclear whether these inconsistencies are due to different experimental conditions or due to odor-driven and state-dependent presynaptic processing in the bulb.
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