Invariant odor recognition with ON–OFF neural ensembles

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2023340118
• Publication Date: 2022-01-07T21:00:35Z
• Authors: Srinath Nizampatnam; Lijun Zhang; Rishabh Chandak; James Li; Baranidharan Raman
• Keywords: Smell; 0303 health sciences; 03 medical and health sciences; Models, Neurological; Odorants; Animals; Grasshoppers; Olfactory Pathways; Biological Sciences; Olfactory Perception; Olfactory Receptor Neurons

Significance The smell of coffee is the same whether it is smelled in a coffee shop or grocery shop (different backgrounds), on a hot day or a cold day (different ambient conditions), after lunch or dinner (different temporal contexts), or using a deep inhalation or normal inhalation (different stimulus dynamics). This feat of pattern recognition that is still difficult to achieve in artificial chemical sensing systems is performed by most sensory systems for their survival. How is this capability achieved? We explored this issue. We found that there are two orthogonal ensembles of neurons, one activated during stimulus presence (ON neurons) and one activated after its termination (OFF neurons), and both contribute to this important computation in a complementary fashion.