Research report 2010 - Max Planck Institute for Medical Research
Processing of odours in the mouse olfactory bulb
Authors
Schaefer, Andreas T.
Departments
Neurophysiologie des Verhaltens
Max-Planck-Institut für medizinische Forschung, Heidelberg
Max-Planck-Institut für medizinische Forschung, Heidelberg
Summary
How sensory stimuli are processed by neural networks is a key question of neuroscience. Olfactory conditioning experiments in mice demonstrate that odour processing is fast and stimulus-dependent. Selective genetic perturbation of the inhibitory circuitry in the first relay station of olfactory processing, the olfactory bulb, altered such discrimination times, with increased inhibition accelerating and decreased inhibition slowing down odour discrimination. This illustrates that inhibition can fulfil a key role in sensory processing.