Odor Representations in Olfactory Cortex: Distributed Rate Coding and Decorrelated Population Activity

Miura, K., Mainen, Z. F., Uchida, N. (June 2012) Odor Representations in Olfactory Cortex: Distributed Rate Coding and Decorrelated Population Activity. Neuron, 74 (6). pp. 1087-1098. ISSN 0896-6273

Abstract

Summary How information encoded in neuronal spike trains is used to guide sensory decisions is a fundamental question. In olfaction, a single sniff is sufficient for fine odor discrimination but the neural representations on which olfactory decisions are based are unclear. Here, we recorded neural ensemble activity in the anterior piriform cortex (aPC) of rats performing an odor mixture categorization task. We show that odors evoke transient bursts locked to sniff onset and that odor identity can be better decoded using burst spike counts than by spike latencies or temporal patterns. Surprisingly, aPC ensembles also exhibited near-zero noise correlations during odor stimulation. Consequently, fewer than 100 aPC neurons provided sufficient information to account for behavioral speed and accuracy, suggesting that behavioral performance limits arise downstream of aPC. These findings demonstrate profound transformations in the dynamics of odor representations from the olfactory bulb to cortex and reveal likely substrates for odor-guided decisions. Video Abstract

Item Type: Paper
Subjects: organism description > animal behavior
organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions > organs types and functions > brain
organism description > animal behavior > odor recognition
organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Mainen lab
Depositing User: Matt Covey
Date: 21 June 2012
Date Deposited: 30 Jan 2013 16:00
Last Modified: 30 Jan 2013 16:00
PMCID: PMC3383608
Related URLs:
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/27003

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