Olfactory responses to attractants and repellents in tsetse

The aims of this study were to investigate how antennal olfactory cells of tsetse (Diptera: Glossinidae) code odour quality and how they are able to discriminate between attractive and repellent odours. For Glossina pallidipes Austen, a survey is presented of the cells' responses to attractive (1-octen-3-ol, acetone, 3-methylphenol, carbon dioxide) and repellent stimuli (2-methoxyphenol, acetophenone, lactic acid, naphthalene). In addition, the responses of these cells to binary mixtures and the dose-response curves of 1-octen-3-ol, 3-methylphenol, 2-methoxyphenol and acetophenone are presented. A minority of the cells responded to one attractant or repellent only, whereas the vast majority were excited by more than one of the attractive and/or repellent stimuli. It is proposed that the peripheral olfactory cells of tsetse discriminate between different compounds via an across-fibre pattern coding, in which the cells that specifically code for attractants or repellents may play a substantial role in composing a unique excitation pattern that informs the central nervous system about the specificity of odours.     

受损背根节神经元自发放电节律的整数倍模式及其动力学变化

本文记录了大鼠损伤背根节神经元的自发放电活动。采用背根节慢性压迫动物模型,记录慢性压迫手术后３－１０ｄ背根节的自发放电。在记录的１５６根纤维中,观察到１７根（占１１Ａ％）出现的动作电位峰峰间期以某一基础间期的整数倍模式出现的整数倍时间节律形式,其回归映射图为晶格状点阵结构,并且该时间形式受细胞膜上钠,钾通道的调控。     

Calbindin-immunopositive cells are cholinergic interneurons in the myenteric plexus of rabbit ileum

The 28-kDa calcium-binding protein (calbindin) is a widely studied neuronal marker in the enteric nervous system of numerous species. Calbindin has previously been detected in myenteric neurons of rabbit ileum in which 3% of all myenteric neurons are calbindin-immunopositive. We have studied the detailed morphology and chemical coding of calbindin-immunopositive neurons in this segment of the gut. We have found calbindin immunoreactivity in both strongly and weakly stained neurons. Of these, the strongly immunoreactive neurons belong to the Dogiel type I category. These neurons project only to other ganglia and primary strands of the plexus and their processes never run to the muscle or mucosal layers. The neurons within this group are 29.5±6.6 m in length and 14.7±3.8 m in width. The second smaller group of immunoreactive cells (27%) label faintly and have different morphological properties. They are characterized by their round medium-sized cell bodies (long axis: 24.4±5.2 m; short axis: 15.5±2.9 m) and do not exhibit immunoreactivity either in their dendrites or in their axonal processes. Double-label studies show that all calbindin-immunopositive neurons lack immunoreactivity for nitric oxide synthase, vasoactive intestinal peptide and substance P but all are immunoreactive for the synthesizing enzyme of acetylcholine, choline acetyltransferase. Thus, populations of neurons containing calbindin are cholinergic interneurons in the myenteric plexus of rabbit ileum.This study was supported by grant OTKA T 34160     

Neural Population Structures and Consequences for Neural Coding

Researchers studying neural coding have speculated that populations of neurons would more effectively represent the stimulus if the neurons "cooperated:" by interacting through lateral connections, the neurons would process and represent information better than if they functioned independently. We apply our new theory of information processing to determine the fidelity limits of simple population structures to encode stimulus features. We focus on noncooperative populations, which have no lateral connections. We show that they always exhibit positively correlated responses and that as population size increases, they perfectly represent the information conveyed by their inputs regardless of the individual neuron's coding scheme. Cooperative populations, which do have lateral connections, can, depending on the nature of the connections, perform better or worse than their noncooperative counterparts. We further show that common notions of synergy fail to capture the level of cooperation and to reflect the information processing properties of populations.     

Different thresholds for detection and discrimination of odors in the honey bee (Apis mellifera)

Naturally occurring odors used by animals for mate recognition, food identification and other purposes must be detected at concentrations that vary across several orders of magnitude. Olfactory systems must therefore have the capacity to represent odors over a large range of concentrations regardless of dramatic changes in the salience, or perceived intensity, of a stimulus. The stability of the representation of an odor relative to other odors across concentration has not been extensively evaluated. We tested the ability of honey bees to discriminate pure odorants across a range of concentrations at and above their detection threshold. Our study showed that pure odorant compounds became progressively easier for honey bees to discriminate with increasing concentration. Discrimination is, therefore, a function of odorant concentration. We hypothesize that the recruitment of sensory cell populations across a range of concentrations may be important for odor coding, perhaps by changing its perceptual qualities or by increasing its salience against background stimuli, and that this mechanism is a general property of olfactory systems.     

Interval-integration underlies amplitude modulation band-suppression selectivity in the anuran midbrain

We examined the mechanisms that underlie band-suppression amplitude modulation selectivity in the auditory midbrain of anurans. Band-suppression neurons respond well to low (5–10 Hz) and high (>70 Hz) rates of sinusoidal amplitude modulation, but poorly, if at all, to intermediate rates. The effectiveness of slow rates of sinusoidal amplitude modulation is due to the long duration of individual pulses; short-duration pulses (<10 ms) failed to elicit spikes when presented at 5–10 pulses s^–1. Each unit responded only after a threshold number of pulses (median=3, range=2–5) were delivered at an optimal rate. The salient stimulus feature was the number of consecutive interpulse intervals that were within a cell-specific tolerance. This interval-integrating process could be reset by a single long interval, even if preceded by a suprathreshold number of intervals. These findings indicate that band-suppression units are a subset of interval-integrating neurons. Band-suppression neurons differed from band-pass interval-integrating cells in having lower interval-number thresholds and broader interval tolerance. We suggest that these properties increase the probability of a postsynaptic spike, given a particular temporal pattern of afferent action potentials in response to long-duration pulses, i.e., predispose them to respond to slow rates of amplitude modulation. Modeling evidence is provided that supports this conclusion.Abbreviations AM amplitude modulation - PRR pulse repetition rate - SAM sinusoidal amplitude modulation     

New perspectives on taste and primate evolution: the dichotomy in gustatory coding for perception of beneficent versus noxious substances as supported by correlations among human thresholds

In various environments where primates are presently observed, as well as in forests and savannas which have been inhabited by australopithecines and early hominids, there are (or there have been presumably) categories of substances eliciting taste signals associated with stereotyped responses. Such is the case for various soluble sugars of fruits and nectars, attracting consumers, and for several plant compounds in which bitter or strongly astringent properties have a repulsive effect. The occurrence of such classes of tasty substances among natural products appears to be related to the evolutionary trends that shaped primate sensory perception (for detecting either beneficent or potentially noxious substances) in the context of a long history of coevolution between animals and plants. Here, we present original psychophysical data on humans (412 individuals aged 17-59 years) as an analogy with which to test recent evidence from electrophysiology in nonhuman primates (Hellekant et al. [1997] J. Neurophysiol. 77:978-993; Danilova et al. [1998] Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 855:160-164) that taste fibers can be grouped into clusters of "best-responding fibers" with two more specific clusters, one for sugars and one for quinine and tannins. The collinearity found between human taste responses (recognition thresholds) for fructose and sucrose, as well as for quinine and tannins, is presented and discussed as another evidence of the two-direction evolutionary trend determining taste sensitivity. Salt perception appears to be totally independent of these trends. Accordingly, the appreciation of a salty taste seems to be a recent culturally learned response, and not a primary taste perception. The very existence of primary tastes is discussed in the context of evolutionary trends, past and present.     

Computer programs for eukaryotic gene prediction

Seven popular programs for gene prediction in eukaryotic organisms are described and evaluated on the basis of availability for in-house and on-line use and prediction accuracy. This report outlines generally applicable approaches to computational gene prediction and known limitations in this field.     

Extracellular transduction events under pulsed stimulation in moth olfactory sensilla

In natural conditions, pheromones released continuously by female moths are broken in discontinuous clumps and filaments. These discontinuities are perceived by flying male moths as periodic variations in the concentration of the stimulus, which have been shown to be essential for location of females. We study analytically and numerically the evolution in time of the activated pheromone-receptor (signaling) complex in response to periodic pulses of pheromone. The 13-reaction model considered takes into account the transport of pheromone molecules by pheromone binding proteins (PBP), their enzymatic deactivation in the perireceptor space and their interaction with receptors at the dendritic membrane of neurons in Antheraea polyphemus sensitive to the main pheromone component. The time-averaged and periodic properties of the temporal evolution of the signaling complex are presented, in both transient and steady states. The same time-averaged response is shown to result from many different pulse trains and to depend hyperbolically on the time-averaged pheromone concentration in air. The dependency of the amplitude of the oscillations of the signaling complex on pulse characteristics, especially frequency, suggests that the model can account for the ability of the studied type of neuron to resolve repetitive pulses up to 2 Hz, as experimentally observed. Modifications of the model for resolving pulses up to 10 Hz, as found in other neuron types sensitive to the minor pheromone components, are discussed.     

Noise,not stimulus entropy,determines neural information rate

In the quest for deciphering the neural code, theoretical advances were made which allow for the determination of the information rate inherent in the spike trains of nerve cells. However, up to now, the dependence of the information rate on stimulus parameters has not been studied in any neuron in a systematic way. Here, I investigate the information carried by the spike trains of H1, a motion-sensitive visual interneuron of the blowfly (Calliphora vicina) using a moving grating as a stimulus. Stimulus parameters fall in two classes: those that have only a minor effect on the information rate like increasing the frequency bandwidth or the maximum amplitude of the stimulus velocity, and those which dramatically affect the neural information rate, like varying the spatial size or the contrast of the visual pattern being moved. It appears that, for a broad range of complex stimuli, the neuron covers the stimulus with its whole response repertoire regardless of the stimulus entropy, with the information rate being limited by the noise of the stimulus and the neural hardware.