Behavioral and Physiological Mechanisms of Olfaction

Behavioral and Physiological Mechanisms of Olfaction Behavioral and Physiological Mechanisms of Olfaction Supplement: Behavioral and Physiological Mechanisms of Olfaction The antennal lobe ..AL.. of the honey bee brain processes information from olfactory sensory cells distributed along the antenna, which is the accessory organ for olfaction. Many aspects of early olfactory processing through several synapses in the brain are similar to processing in the vertebrate olfactory epithelium, olfactory bulb ..OB.. and piriform ..olfactory.. cortex. These similarities include complex spatio]temporal codes set up in the AL and OB that are collapsed to a distributed spatial code in subsequent cortical processing layers ..the Mushroom Bodies in bees are the analog to the piriform cortex... Furthermore, processing in the AL and OB is sensitive to modulation by an array of biogenic amines, among which are two in particular ..epinephrine in the OB and octopamine in the AL.. that represent the occurrences of important reinforcing events. These amines likely underlie an array of documented mechanisms for behavioral plasticity ..learning and subsequent memory consolidation.. that honey bees and mammals display toward odors. These similarities have most likely evolved independently of one another, which indicates that these mechanisms of neural processing and reinforcement reflect a fundamental solution to early olfactory processing when animals must learn about odors. Two of the foci of the original NCRR award were to ..1.. investigate how neural processing in the AL is altered by reinforcement that underlie behavior mechanisms of learning and ..2.. to investigate via RNA interference the causal relationship between octopamine receptors and these changes. Recent introduction of new calcium imaging techniques ..e.g. two]photon.. and increases in the stability of electrophysiological recordings have greatly augmented our ability to perform research under Aim 3 Hypothesis 5 of the original application. The supplement will fund the use of these technologies to increase the tempo and impact of this funded research aim.