A transformation from temporal to ensemble coding in a model of piriform cortex
- Hebrew University, Israel
- Duke University Medical School, United States
- Columbia University, United States
- Duke University School of Medicine, United States
Abstract
Different coding strategies are used to represent odor information at various stages of the mammalian olfactory system. A temporal latency code represents odor identity in olfactory bulb (OB), but this temporal information is discarded in piriform cortex (PCx) where odor identity is instead encoded through ensemble membership. We developed a spiking PCx network model to understand how this transformation is implemented. In the model, the impact of OB inputs activated earliest after inhalation is amplified within PCx by diffuse recurrent collateral excitation, which then recruits strong, sustained feedback inhibition that suppresses the impact of later-responding glomeruli. We model increasing odor concentrations by decreasing glomerulus onset latencies while preserving their activation sequences. This produces a multiplexed cortical odor code in which activated ensembles are robust to concentration changes while concentration information is encoded through population synchrony. Our model demonstrates how PCx circuitry can implement multiplexed ensemble-identity/temporal-concentration odor coding.
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Author details
Funding
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (DC015525)
- Kevin M Franks
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (DC016782)
- Kevin M Franks
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experimental protocols were approved by Duke University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (protocol # A220-15-08), which was approved on 08-27-2015.
Copyright
© 2018, Stern et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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A transformation from temporal to ensemble coding in a model of piriform cortex
eLife 7:e34831.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.34831
