tailieunhanh - Báo cáo sinh học: "Representations of odor plume flux are accentuated deep within the moth brain"

Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về sinh học được đăng trên tạp chí sinh học Journal of Biology đề tài: Representations of odor plume flux are accentuated deep within the moth brain. | Journal of Biology Journal of Biology Minireview Representations of odor plume flux are accentuated deep within the moth brain Thomas C Baker Address Center for Chemical Ecology Department of Entomology 105 Chemical Ecology Laboratory Penn State University University Park PA 16802 USA. Email tcb10@ Published 20 February 2009 Journal of Biology 2009 8 16 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http content 8 2 16 2009 BioMed Central Ltd Abstract Odor space the representation of odor quality in the insect brain is known to be optimally resolved when lateral inhibitory pathways are functioning normally. A new study published in the Journal of Biology now shows that odor time resolution also depends on the normal functioning of such pathways. Odor space and odor time Understanding how insects detect discriminate and act upon relevant olfactory stimuli such as pheromones and host odors has been a major challenge for researchers for decades. The act upon part of this challenge involves understanding insects odor- mediated behavior that is how they maneuver when they smell something relevant. Much has been learned over the years about sexpheromone-mediated flight maneuvers in moths and much has also been learned about odor discrimination from work on moth sex pheromone systems. The olfactory part of these systems involves the activities of an array of thousands of tightly and differentially tuned olfactory receptor neurons ORNs on the male antenna imbuing it with a distributed specificity of signal acquisition for each of the two or three sex pheromone components in the blend. Acquisition is followed by signal processing by networks of interneurons that form a fine-grained odor quality pattern-recognition system. One part of sex pheromone olfaction thus involves a sampling and reporting of the relative abundances of the different chemicals that comprise the blend and classifying the resulting pattern of .