title: Processing of olfactory information at three neuronal levels in the spiny lobster.
abstract: Odor quality coding was analyzed at three neuronal levels, receptor cells and two levels of chemosensory interneurons, in the olfactory system of the spiny lobster Panulirus argus . Responses to three of the most stimulatory compounds for this animal - taurine, glutamate and betaine - were recorded at each level in order to compare basic neuronal response properties, single cell and population response spectra, and across-neuron patterns. Mean response specificity increased for cells at each successive neuronal level. The increase in breadth of tuning between receptor cells and low-order interneurons was paralleled by an increase in interstimulus across-neuron correlations. However, in high-order interneurons, there was a relative decline in across-neuron correlations, indicating that the more broadly-tuned high-order interneurons are better able to discriminate between any two compounds than are the more narrowly-tuned low-order interneurons. Although stimulus quality appears to be coded by interneurons as an across-fiber pattern, the fact that some low-order and high-order interneurons retained the narrow specificity of receptor cells suggests that labeled lines may have an important function in coding throughout the olfactory pathway of the spiny lobster.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001622:Betaine; D002628:Chemoreceptor Cells / Q000502:physiology; D004594:Electrophysiology; D005971:Glutamates; D018698:Glutamic Acid; D007395:Interneurons / Q000502:physiology; D008121:Nephropidae / Q000502:physiology*; D009424:Nervous System Physiological Phenomena; D009812:Odorants; D012903:Smell / Q000502:physiology*; D013654:Taurine
chemical_list: D005971:Glutamates; D013654:Taurine; D018698:Glutamic Acid; D001622:Betaine