17:00 - 19:00
Fri-S10
Hahn Lecture Hall
Chair/s:
Yoram Ben-Shaul, Marc Spehr
The symposium presents new research developments related to the mouse vomeronasal system. The talks will describe new developments related to the entire VNS pathway, from sensory neurons and sensory organ, via the accessory olfactory bulb, all the way to the amygdala and the hypothalamus.
Stimulus induced local field oscillations in the accessory olfactory bulb
Fri-S10-003
Presented by: Yoram Ben-Shaul
Oksana Cohen 1, Anat Kahan 1, Sebastian Mallinowski 2, Idan Steinberg 1, Marc Spehr 2, Yoram Ben-Shaul 1
1 The Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine, Israel Canada Medical Institute, Department of Medical Neurobiology, 2 RWTH Aachen University, Institute for Biology II, Department of Chemosensation

Local field potential (LFP) signals and oscillations are implicated in information processing in the main olfactory system, but their role in vomeronasal system (VNS) function is less understood. We recently identified prominent non-stationary oscillatory LFP patterns in the accessory olfactory bulb (AOB), that are correlated with stimulus delivery to the VNS. These theta band (5-8 Hz) patterns were found in anesthetized mice under controlled stimulus delivery, and resemble those found by other groups in awake behaving mice. We sought to understand how these patterns are related to the presentation of specific stimuli and what role they play in information processing. One challenge in the analysis of such patterns is that oscillatory episodes vary in magnitude and frequency, and are sometimes shadowed by other sources of experimental noise. By considering the spatial distribution of these oscillations, we devised a method that provides an ongoing measure of the occurrence and magnitude of these oscillatory patterns. Using this method, we show that the patterns vary in amplitude, that the amplitude depends on the identity of sensory stimuli, and that when sufficiently strong, they present as full-fledged oscillations. Notably, spiking activity of AOB neurons is correlated with particular phases of these oscillations, suggesting that these oscillatory patterns can coordinate the spiking activity of AOB output neurons to effectively activate downstream processing stages.