13:30 - 15:30
Sat-S14
Hahn Lecture Hall
Chair/s:
Tobias Ackels, Sebastian H Bitzenhofer, Katherine Nagel
Olfactory cues are highly dynamic, as is their processing in the brain. With this symposium, we will highlight recent work on the dynamics of natural odour stimuli, olfactory representations, and olfactory behaviour, in a variety of model systems (mouse, fish, and fly). This symposium will give an exciting and timely overview merging complementary perspectives on the dynamic aspects of olfactory processing and perception across model systems.
Experience dependent plasticity of ongoing and odor driven activity
Sat-S14-001
Presented by: Emre Yaksi
Emre Yaksi
Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, NTNU
Ongoing neural activity has been observed across several brain regions and thought to reflect the internal state of the brain. Yet, it is not fully understood how ongoing brain activity interacts with sensory experience and shape sensory representations. Here, we show that projection neurons of the fruit fly antennal lobe exhibit spatiotemporally organized ongoing activity in the absence of odor stimulation. Upon repeated exposure to odors, we observe a gradual and long-lasting decrease in the amplitude and frequency of spontaneous calcium events, resulting in a reorganization of correlations between olfactory glomeruli during ongoing activity. Accompanying these plastic changes, we find that repeated odor experience reduces trial-to-trial variability and enhances the specificity of odor representations. Our results reveal a previously undescribed experience-dependent plasticity at peripheral levels of the fruit fly olfactory system.