A High-Bandwidth Dual-Channel Olfactory Stimulator for Studying Temporal Sensitivity of Olfactory Processing

Raiser, Georg; Galizia, C. Giovanni; Szyszka, Paul

doi:10.1093/chemse/bjw114

Cited by 42 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 59 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This meant that glass vials could be screwed in and out of the insets. Solenoid valves typically limit high-fidelity odour stimulation resulting in odour rise times of several 10s of milliseconds under optimal conditions (Raiser et al, 2017). We thus employed highspeed micro-dispense valves with custom electronics for pulse-width modulation to maximize bandwidth: 4 VHS valves (INKX0514750A, The Lee Company, Westbrook CT, USA) were installed in a 4-position manifold (INMA0601340B, The Lee Company, Westbrook CT, USA) with standard mounting ports (IKTX0322170A, The Lee Company, Westbrook CT, USA).…”

Section: High-speed Odour Delivery Devicementioning

confidence: 99%

Mammalian olfaction is a high temporal bandwidth sense

Erskine

Ackels

Dasgupta

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Odours are transported in turbulent plumes resulting locally in highly fluctuating odour concentration (Celani et al., 2014;Murlis et al., 1992;Mylne and Mason, 1991;Shraiman and Siggia, 2000). Yet, whether mammals can make use of the ensuing temporal structure (Celani et al., 2014;Crimaldi and Koseff, 2001;Murlis et al., 1992;Mylne and Mason, 1991;Schmuker et al., 2016;Vickers, 2000) to extract information about the olfactory environment remains unknown. Here, we use dual-energy photoionisation recording with >300 Hz bandwidth to simultaneously determine odour concentrations of two odours in air. We show that temporal correlation of odour concentrations reliably predicts whether odorants emerge from the same or different sources in normal turbulent environments outside and in laboratory conditions. To replicate natural odour dynamics in a reproducible manner we developed a multichannel odour delivery device allowing presentation of several odours with 10 ms temporal resolution. Integrating this device in an automated operant conditioning system we demonstrate that mice can reliably discriminate the correlation structure of odours at frequencies of up to 40 Hz. Consistent with this finding, output neurons in the olfactory bulb show segregated responses depending on the correlation of odour stimuli with populations of 10s of neurons sufficient to reach behavioural performance. Our work thus demonstrates that mammals can perceive temporal structure in odour stimuli at surprisingly fast timescales. This in turn might be useful for key behavioural challenges (Jacobs, 2012) such as odour source separation (Hopfield, 1991), figure-ground separation (Rokni et al., 2014) or odour localisation (Vergassola et al., 2007;Vickers, 2000). Main TextThe turbulent nature of air as well as water flow results in complex temporal fluctuations of odour concentrations that depend on the distance and direction of odour sources (Atema, 1995;Baker et al.

show abstract

Section: High-speed Odour Delivery Devicementioning

confidence: 99%

Mammalian olfaction is a high temporal bandwidth sense

Erskine

Ackels

Dasgupta

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Instead, they arrive in intermittent series of pulses whose statistics carry information about the odor source location 18 . Thus, various types of fluctuating odorant stimuli have been used to characterize the dynamic response properties of ORN 6,22,23,29,30 . As in other sensory modalities 31,32 , paired recordings of a fluctuating sensory signal and the corresponding neural response have be used to estimate the linear kernel that best describes the transformation from the stimulus to the response 6,22,23,33,34 .…”

Section: How To Deliver Intermittent Odorant Signalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Controlling and measuring dynamic odorant stimuli in the laboratory

Gorur-Shandilya

Martelli

Demir

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Animals experience complex odorant stimuli that vary widely in composition, intensity and temporal properties. However, stimuli used to study olfaction in the laboratory are much simpler. This mismatch arises from the challenges in measuring and controlling them precisely and accurately. Even simple pulses can have diverse kinetics that depend on their molecular identity. Here, we introduce a model to describe how stimulus kinetics depend on the molecular identity of the odorant and the geometry of the delivery system. We describe methods to deliver dynamic odorant stimuli of several types, including broadly distributed stimuli that reproduce some of the statistics of naturalistic plumes, in a reproducible and precise manner. Finally, we introduce a method to calibrate a Photo-Ionization Detector to any odorant it can detect, using no additional components. Our approaches are affordable and flexible and can be used to advance our understanding of how olfactory neurons encode real-world odor signals.

show abstract

“…The rise times (time it took to reach from 5 % to 95 % of the maximum PID signal) were also similar for the odorant pair BN/BA (BN: 411 ± 10 ms, BA: 428 ± 12 ms; mean ± SD) and for the odorant pair BD/EA (BD: 428 ms ± 26 ms, EA: 440 ms ± 21 ms), but less similar for the odorant pair BN/BZ (BN: 400 ms ± 12 ms, BZ: 444 ms ± 9 ms) ( Figure 1H, 1I and S1C). The differences in stimulus dynamics could be explained by the difference in the molecular mass between odorants, as stimulus dynamics get slower with increasing molecular mass (in g/mol, BN: 72; BA: 72; BD: 86; EA: 88; BZ: 106) [14,15]. To visualize how flies explored space based on the odorant experience, we projected their flight trajectories on a plane, and calculated the probability across flies to visit a particular pixel (visit probability, Figure 2A).…”

Section: Tracking Of Temporally Well-controlled Odorant Stimuli In Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The wind speed was 0.4 m s -1 . We injected odorants into the inlet of the wind tunnel with an olfactory stimulator [15]. The outlet of the olfactory stimulator was 1 cm in diameter and was placed just outside of the honey comb grid, creating a laminar odorant plume within the tunnel.…”

Section: Wind Tunnelmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Olfactory object recognition based on fine-scale stimulus timing inDrosophila

Sehdev

Mohammed

Triphan

et al. 2018

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

10Odorants of behaviorally relevant objects (e.g., food sources) intermingle with those from other sources. 11Therefore, to sniff out whether an odor source is good or badwithout actually visiting itanimals first 12 need to segregate the odorants from different sources. To do so, animals could use temporal cues, since 13 odorants from one source exhibit correlated fluctuations, while odorants from different sources are less 14 correlated. However, it remains unclear whether animals can rely solely on temporal cues for odor source 15 segregation. Here we show that flies can use temporal differences in odorant arrival down to 5 milliseconds 16 to segregate mixtures of attractive and aversive odorants, and odor source segregation works for odorants 17 with innate, as well as learned valences. Thus, the insect olfactory system can use stimulus timing for 18 olfactory object segregation, similar as mammalian auditory or visual systems use stimulus timing for 19 concurrent sound segregation and figure-ground segregation. 20 21 129 attractive odorant A and the aversive odorant B the most (Fig. 3C, Fig. S1-S3). We determined this area for 130 each experimental set separately (see Materials and Methods). Note that this method maximizes the 131 differences in approach probability between odorants A and B by design. Therefore, we refrain from 132 comparing flies' approach probabilities for A or B and restrict the comparisons to the mixtures. 133The flies' responses to the mixtures depended on the timing between B and A (Fig. 3D). For onset 134 asynchronies of 5 ms (B5A) and 33 ms (B33A), flies were attracted to the target and scored a higher 135 approach probability than for the synchronous mixture AB (p(B5A > AB) = 0.984, p(B33A > AB) = 0.998), 136

show abstract

A High-Bandwidth Dual-Channel Olfactory Stimulator for Studying Temporal Sensitivity of Olfactory Processing

Cited by 42 publications

References 59 publications

Mammalian olfaction is a high temporal bandwidth sense

Mammalian olfaction is a high temporal bandwidth sense

Controlling and measuring dynamic odorant stimuli in the laboratory

Olfactory object recognition based on fine-scale stimulus timing inDrosophila

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About