Characterizing the encoding of dynamical olfactory inputs in single olfactory sensory neurons to remote control larval chemotaxis by means of optogenetics
Animals have to deal with an environment presenting vast amounts of ever-changing sensory information. What features of this information flow are captured by the sensory system? My thesis work examines how signals experienced during free olfactory behaviors are processed by first-order olfactory sen...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2015 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | CBUC, CESCA |
| Repositorio: | TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/482048 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10803/482048 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Neurociencia Olfato Electrofisiología Optogenética Quimiotaxis Neuroscience Olfaction Electrophysiology Optogenetics Chemotaxis 616.8 |
| Sumario: | Animals have to deal with an environment presenting vast amounts of ever-changing sensory information. What features of this information flow are captured by the sensory system? My thesis work examines how signals experienced during free olfactory behaviors are processed by first-order olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) of the Drosophila larva. By combining a novel extracellular recording technique with a microfluidics control system to control odor delivery in time and space, the computational principles underlying the encoding of dynamical odor stimuli were explored in a single OSN. An optogenetic approach was used to explore the OSN coding space and mimic naturalistic odor responses. The results described herein suggest that relative changes of the stimulus and their temporal integration are captured in a single OSN. Finally, larval behavior was characterized in closed-loop virtual odor environments and dissected with respect to the influence of dynamic features of the stimulus. It emerged that the neural activity of a single OSN is firmly correlated with dynamic features, notably the derivative of the stimulus intensity. These findings link the neural activity of single sensory neuron to behavioral transitions. Taken together, the results of this work provide an entry point into the understanding of larval action selection during chemotaxis. |
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