title: Information processing in the olfactory systems of insects and vertebrates.
abstract: Insects and vertebrates separately evolved remarkably similar mechanisms to process olfactory information. Odors are sampled by huge numbers of receptor neurons, which converge type-wise upon a much smaller number of principal neurons within glomeruli. There, odor information is transformed by inhibitory interneuron-mediated, cross-glomerular circuit interactions that impose slow temporal structures and fast oscillations onto the firing patterns of principal neurons. The transformations appear to improve signal-to-noise characteristics, define odor categories, achieve precise odor identification, extract invariant features, and begin the process of sparsening the neural representations of odors for efficient discrimination, memorization, and recognition.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The University of Chicago, 940 E 57th St., Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
authors.forename: Leslie M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Kay
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stopfer
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001683:Biological Clocks; D019706:Excitatory Postsynaptic Potentials; D006801:Humans; D007313:Insecta / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D009830:Olfactory Bulb / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000166:cytology; D009833:Olfactory Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D018035:Receptors, Odorant / Q000502:physiology; D009435:Synaptic Transmission / Q000502:physiology*; D014714:Vertebrates / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D018035:Receptors, Odorant