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Modeling the response of a population of olfactory receptor neurons to an odorant

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Abstract

We modeled the firing rate of populations of olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) responding to an odorant at different concentrations. Two cases were considered: a population of ORNs that all express the same olfactory receptor (OR), and a population that expresses many different ORs. To take into account ORN variability, we replaced single parameter values in a biophysical ORN model with values drawn from statistical distributions, chosen to correspond to experimental data. For ORNs expressing the same OR, we found that the distributions of firing frequencies are Gaussian at all concentrations, with larger mean and standard deviation at higher concentrations. For a population expressing different ORs, the distribution of firing frequencies can be described as the superposition of a Gaussian distribution and a lognormal distribution. Distributions of maximum value and dynamic range of spiking frequencies in the simulated ORN population were similar to experimental results.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the European Network of Excellence “General Olfaction and Sensing Projects on a European Level” (GOSPEL) and by the European grant FP7 Bio-ICT convergence No. 216916 “Biologically inspired computation for chemical sensing” (Neurochem) to M.S., A.L., J.H.-K. and J.-P.R., and by the French-British grant ANR-BBSRC Sysbio 2007 “Pherosys” to J.-P.R. We thank Petr Lánský and two anonymous referees for helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR1272 Physiologie de l’insecte, INRA, route de Saint-Cyr, 78000, Versailles, France

    Malin Sandström & Jean-Pierre Rospars

  2. Department of Communication and Computer Science, Computational Biology Group, KTH, AlbaNova University Center, SE-10691, Stockholm, Sweden

    Malin Sandström, Anders Lansner & Jeanette Hellgren-Kotaleski

  3. Stockholm Brain Institute, Karolinska Institute, SE-17177, Stockholm, Sweden

    Malin Sandström, Anders Lansner & Jeanette Hellgren-Kotaleski

  4. Department of Numerical Analysis and Computer Science, Stockholm University, SE-10044, Stockholm, Sweden

    Anders Lansner

  5. Unité Mathématiques et Informatique Appliquées, INRA, F-78350, Jouy-en-Josas, France

    Jean-Pierre Rospars

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  1. Malin Sandström
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  2. Anders Lansner
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  3. Jeanette Hellgren-Kotaleski
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  4. Jean-Pierre Rospars
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Correspondence to Jean-Pierre Rospars.

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Sandström, M., Lansner, A., Hellgren-Kotaleski, J. et al. Modeling the response of a population of olfactory receptor neurons to an odorant. J Comput Neurosci 27, 337–355 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-009-0147-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-009-0147-5

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