Cargando…

The contribution of temporal coding to odor coding and odor perception in humans

Whether neurons encode information through their spike rates, their activity times or both is an ongoing debate in systems neuroscience. Here, we tested whether humans can discriminate between a pair of temporal odor mixtures (TOMs) composed of the same two components delivered in rapid succession i...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Perl, Ofer, Nahum, Nahum, Belelovsky, Katya, Haddad, Rafi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7007219/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32031520
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.49734
_version_ 1783495284230193152
author Perl, Ofer
Nahum, Nahum
Belelovsky, Katya
Haddad, Rafi
author_facet Perl, Ofer
Nahum, Nahum
Belelovsky, Katya
Haddad, Rafi
author_sort Perl, Ofer
collection PubMed
description Whether neurons encode information through their spike rates, their activity times or both is an ongoing debate in systems neuroscience. Here, we tested whether humans can discriminate between a pair of temporal odor mixtures (TOMs) composed of the same two components delivered in rapid succession in either one temporal order or its reverse. These TOMs presumably activate the same olfactory neurons but at different times and thus differ mainly in the time of neuron activation. We found that most participants could hardly discriminate between TOMs, although they easily discriminated between a TOM and one of its components. By contrast, participants succeeded in discriminating between the TOMs when they were notified of their successive nature in advance. We thus suggest that the time of glomerulus activation can be exploited to extract odor-related information, although it does not change the odor perception substantially, as should be expected from an odor code per se.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7007219
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2020
publisher eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-70072192020-02-10 The contribution of temporal coding to odor coding and odor perception in humans Perl, Ofer Nahum, Nahum Belelovsky, Katya Haddad, Rafi eLife Neuroscience Whether neurons encode information through their spike rates, their activity times or both is an ongoing debate in systems neuroscience. Here, we tested whether humans can discriminate between a pair of temporal odor mixtures (TOMs) composed of the same two components delivered in rapid succession in either one temporal order or its reverse. These TOMs presumably activate the same olfactory neurons but at different times and thus differ mainly in the time of neuron activation. We found that most participants could hardly discriminate between TOMs, although they easily discriminated between a TOM and one of its components. By contrast, participants succeeded in discriminating between the TOMs when they were notified of their successive nature in advance. We thus suggest that the time of glomerulus activation can be exploited to extract odor-related information, although it does not change the odor perception substantially, as should be expected from an odor code per se. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020-02-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7007219/ /pubmed/32031520 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.49734 Text en © 2020, Perl et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Perl, Ofer
Nahum, Nahum
Belelovsky, Katya
Haddad, Rafi
The contribution of temporal coding to odor coding and odor perception in humans
title The contribution of temporal coding to odor coding and odor perception in humans
title_full The contribution of temporal coding to odor coding and odor perception in humans
title_fullStr The contribution of temporal coding to odor coding and odor perception in humans
title_full_unstemmed The contribution of temporal coding to odor coding and odor perception in humans
title_short The contribution of temporal coding to odor coding and odor perception in humans
title_sort contribution of temporal coding to odor coding and odor perception in humans
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7007219/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32031520
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.49734
work_keys_str_mv AT perlofer thecontributionoftemporalcodingtoodorcodingandodorperceptioninhumans
AT nahumnahum thecontributionoftemporalcodingtoodorcodingandodorperceptioninhumans
AT belelovskykatya thecontributionoftemporalcodingtoodorcodingandodorperceptioninhumans
AT haddadrafi thecontributionoftemporalcodingtoodorcodingandodorperceptioninhumans
AT perlofer contributionoftemporalcodingtoodorcodingandodorperceptioninhumans
AT nahumnahum contributionoftemporalcodingtoodorcodingandodorperceptioninhumans
AT belelovskykatya contributionoftemporalcodingtoodorcodingandodorperceptioninhumans
AT haddadrafi contributionoftemporalcodingtoodorcodingandodorperceptioninhumans