BEHAVIORAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL MECHANISMS OF OLFACTION

嗅觉的行为和生理机制

基本信息

批准号：
2392919
负责人：
BRIAN H. SMITH
金额：
$ 10.66万
依托单位：
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
1993
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
1993-04-01 至 1999-03-31
项目状态：
已结题

项目摘要

The honey bee (Apis mellifera) will be used to study behavioral and physiological mechanisms involved in generating neural representations in the olfactory system. The olfactory systems of both vertebrates and invertebrates, such as the honey bee, are structured like distributed processors. Anatomical features of these systems resemble features of neural network models of pattern recognition and memory, which compute input/output relationships as a function of intermediate levels of processing among elements that have been activated in parallel. Recent models of olfactory systems have identified temporal fluctuation in the odor signal, pattern recognition, and associative memory as potentially important features that are extracted by early olfactory processing. Therefore, because of the anatomical similarities between vertebrates and invertebrates, use of an invertebrate animal as a model system will provide generalizable insights into how neural representations in the olfactory systems of a wide variety of animals are generated. Honey bees are ideally suited for the combination of behavioral, pharmacological, and physiological studies proposed. Workers learn to respond to floral odorants and pheromones in novels ways. Therefore, mechanisms proposed for pheromone processing in insects can be tested for applicability to floral odorant processing. Behavioral experiments will involve conditioning worker bees to respond to an odorant or to mixtures of two or more odorants. Subsequent test will be designed to evaluate mechanisms that explain the following processes: (1) why one odorant overshadows or fails to overshadow another; (2) interaction of neural representations for odorants and tastes; (3) how one odorant can block learning about a second after the first has been associated with a reinforcer such as sucrose. Pharmacological experiments are proposed to study the role of olfactory lobe inhibitory processing in generating mixture and temporal processing phenomena. Several different GABA agonists and antagonists will be evaluated, including those that interact with GABA-associated benzodiazepine binding sites.

蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）将用于研究行为和行为参与生成神经表征的生理机制嗅觉系统。脊椎动物的嗅觉系统无脊椎动物，例如蜜蜂，其结构类似于分布式处理器。这些系统的解剖特征类似于模式识别和记忆的神经网络模型，计算输入/输出关系作为中间水平的函数已并行激活的元素之间的处理。最近的嗅觉系统模型已经确定了嗅觉的时间波动气味信号、模式识别和联想记忆可能通过早期嗅觉处理提取的重要特征。因此，由于脊椎动物和脊椎动物之间的解剖学相似性无脊椎动物，使用无脊椎动物作为模型系统将提供关于神经表征如何在产生了多种动物的嗅觉系统。蜜蜂非常适合行为学、药理学、和生理学研究提出。工人们学习对花卉做出反应小说中的气味剂和信息素。因此，提出的机制可以测试昆虫信息素处理的适用性花香加工。行为实验将涉及调节工蜂对气味剂或两种气味的混合物的反应或更多气味剂。后续测试将旨在评估解释以下过程的机制：（1）为什么一种气味剂遮盖或未能遮盖他人； (2)神经元相互作用气味和味道的表示； (3) 一种气味剂如何阻挡在第一个与某个相关联之后学习第二个强化剂如蔗糖。建议进行药理实验研究嗅觉叶抑制加工在生成中的作用混合和时间处理现象。几种不同的GABA 将评估激动剂和拮抗剂，包括相互作用的激动剂和拮抗剂具有 GABA 相关的苯二氮卓结合位点。