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Non-synaptic interactions between olfactory receptor neurons, a possible key feature of odor processing in flies
When flies explore their environment, they encounter odors in complex, highly intermittent plumes. To navigate a plume and, for example, find food, they must solve several challenges, including reliably identifying mixtures of odorants and their intensities, and discriminating odorant mixtures emana...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8668107/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34898600 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009583 |
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author | Pannunzi, Mario Nowotny, Thomas |
author_facet | Pannunzi, Mario Nowotny, Thomas |
author_sort | Pannunzi, Mario |
collection | PubMed |
description | When flies explore their environment, they encounter odors in complex, highly intermittent plumes. To navigate a plume and, for example, find food, they must solve several challenges, including reliably identifying mixtures of odorants and their intensities, and discriminating odorant mixtures emanating from a single source from odorants emitted from separate sources and just mixing in the air. Lateral inhibition in the antennal lobe is commonly understood to help solving these challenges. With a computational model of the Drosophila olfactory system, we analyze the utility of an alternative mechanism for solving them: Non-synaptic (“ephaptic”) interactions (NSIs) between olfactory receptor neurons that are stereotypically co-housed in the same sensilla. We find that NSIs improve mixture ratio detection and plume structure sensing and do so more efficiently than the traditionally considered mechanism of lateral inhibition in the antennal lobe. The best performance is achieved when both mechanisms work in synergy. However, we also found that NSIs decrease the dynamic range of co-housed ORNs, especially when they have similar sensitivity to an odorant. These results shed light, from a functional perspective, on the role of NSIs, which are normally avoided between neurons, for instance by myelination. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8668107 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-86681072021-12-14 Non-synaptic interactions between olfactory receptor neurons, a possible key feature of odor processing in flies Pannunzi, Mario Nowotny, Thomas PLoS Comput Biol Research Article When flies explore their environment, they encounter odors in complex, highly intermittent plumes. To navigate a plume and, for example, find food, they must solve several challenges, including reliably identifying mixtures of odorants and their intensities, and discriminating odorant mixtures emanating from a single source from odorants emitted from separate sources and just mixing in the air. Lateral inhibition in the antennal lobe is commonly understood to help solving these challenges. With a computational model of the Drosophila olfactory system, we analyze the utility of an alternative mechanism for solving them: Non-synaptic (“ephaptic”) interactions (NSIs) between olfactory receptor neurons that are stereotypically co-housed in the same sensilla. We find that NSIs improve mixture ratio detection and plume structure sensing and do so more efficiently than the traditionally considered mechanism of lateral inhibition in the antennal lobe. The best performance is achieved when both mechanisms work in synergy. However, we also found that NSIs decrease the dynamic range of co-housed ORNs, especially when they have similar sensitivity to an odorant. These results shed light, from a functional perspective, on the role of NSIs, which are normally avoided between neurons, for instance by myelination. Public Library of Science 2021-12-13 /pmc/articles/PMC8668107/ /pubmed/34898600 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009583 Text en © 2021 Pannunzi, Nowotny https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Pannunzi, Mario Nowotny, Thomas Non-synaptic interactions between olfactory receptor neurons, a possible key feature of odor processing in flies |
title | Non-synaptic interactions between olfactory receptor neurons, a possible key feature of odor processing in flies |
title_full | Non-synaptic interactions between olfactory receptor neurons, a possible key feature of odor processing in flies |
title_fullStr | Non-synaptic interactions between olfactory receptor neurons, a possible key feature of odor processing in flies |
title_full_unstemmed | Non-synaptic interactions between olfactory receptor neurons, a possible key feature of odor processing in flies |
title_short | Non-synaptic interactions between olfactory receptor neurons, a possible key feature of odor processing in flies |
title_sort | non-synaptic interactions between olfactory receptor neurons, a possible key feature of odor processing in flies |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8668107/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34898600 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009583 |
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