Extracting Behaviorally Relevant Traits from Natural Stimuli: Benefits of Combinatorial Representations at the Accessory Olfactory Bulb

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004798
• Publication Date: 2016-03-03T18:56:16Z
• Authors: Anat Kahan; Yoram Ben-Shaul
• Keywords: Olfactory perception

For many animals, chemosensation is essential for guiding social behavior. However, because multiple factors can modulate levels of individual chemical cues, deriving information about other individuals via natural stimuli involves considerable challenges. How extracted despite these sources variability poorly understood. The vomeronasal system provides an excellent opportunity to study this topic due its role in detecting socially relevant traits. Here, we focus on two such traits: a female mouse's strain and reproductive state. In particular, measure stimulus-induced neuronal activity the accessory olfactory bulb (AOB) response various dilutions urine, vaginal secretions, saliva, from estrus non-estrus mice different strains. We first show that all tested secretions provide female's receptivity genotype. Next, investigate how traits be decoded variability. neurons are limited their capacity allow trait classification across simple linear classifiers sampling small ensembles substantial improvement over attained with units. Furthermore, some more efficiently detected than others, particular may optimized conveying specific Across stimulus sources, discrimination between strains accurate receptivity, detection urine. Our findings highlight challenges chemosensory processing stimuli, suggest downstream readout stages decode behaviorally by distinct but overlapping populations AOB neurons.