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Complementary codes for odor identity and intensity in olfactory cortex.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Bolding, KA; Franks, KM
Published in: Elife
April 5, 2017

The ability to represent both stimulus identity and intensity is fundamental for perception. Using large-scale population recordings in awake mice, we find distinct coding strategies facilitate non-interfering representations of odor identity and intensity in piriform cortex. Simply knowing which neurons were activated is sufficient to accurately represent odor identity, with no additional information about identity provided by spike time or spike count. Decoding analyses indicate that cortical odor representations are not sparse. Odorant concentration had no systematic effect on spike counts, indicating that rate cannot encode intensity. Instead, odor intensity can be encoded by temporal features of the population response. We found a subpopulation of rapid, largely concentration-invariant responses was followed by another population of responses whose latencies systematically decreased at higher concentrations. Cortical inhibition transforms olfactory bulb output to sharpen these dynamics. Our data therefore reveal complementary coding strategies that can selectively represent distinct features of a stimulus.

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Published In

Elife

DOI

EISSN

2050-084X

Publication Date

April 5, 2017

Volume

6

Location

England

Related Subject Headings

  • Piriform Cortex
  • Olfactory Perception
  • Odorants
  • Neurons
  • Mice
  • Animals
  • Action Potentials
  • 42 Health sciences
  • 32 Biomedical and clinical sciences
  • 31 Biological sciences
 

Citation

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Bolding, K. A., & Franks, K. M. (2017). Complementary codes for odor identity and intensity in olfactory cortex. Elife, 6. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22630
Bolding, Kevin A., and Kevin M. Franks. “Complementary codes for odor identity and intensity in olfactory cortex.Elife 6 (April 5, 2017). https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22630.
Bolding, Kevin A., and Kevin M. Franks. “Complementary codes for odor identity and intensity in olfactory cortex.Elife, vol. 6, Apr. 2017. Pubmed, doi:10.7554/eLife.22630.

Published In

Elife

DOI

EISSN

2050-084X

Publication Date

April 5, 2017

Volume

6

Location

England

Related Subject Headings

  • Piriform Cortex
  • Olfactory Perception
  • Odorants
  • Neurons
  • Mice
  • Animals
  • Action Potentials
  • 42 Health sciences
  • 32 Biomedical and clinical sciences
  • 31 Biological sciences