The Performance of Olfactory Receptor Neurons: The Rate of Concentration Change Indicates Functional Specializations in the Cockroach Peripheral Olfactory System

Abstract

Slow and continuous changes in odor concentration were used as a possible easy method for measuring the effect of the instantaneous concentration and the rate of concentration change on the activity of the olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) of basiconic sensilla on the cockroach antennae. During oscillating concentration changes, impulse frequency increased with rising instantaneous concentration and this increase was stronger the faster concentration rose through the higher concentration values. The effect of the concentration rate on the ORNs responses to the instantaneous concentration was invariant to the duration of the oscillation period: shallow concentration waves provided by long periods elicited the same response to the instantaneous concentration as steep concentration waves at brief periods. Thus, the double dependence remained unchanged when the range of concentration rates varied. This distinguishes the ORNs of basiconic sensilla from those of trichoid sensilla (Tichy and Hellwig, 2018) which adjust their gain of response according to the duration of the oscillating period. The precision of the ORNs to discriminate increments of slowly rising odor concentration was studied by applying gradual ramp-like concentration changes at different rates. While the ORNs of the trichoid sensilla perform better the slower the concentration rate, those of the basiconic sensilla show no preference for a specific rate of concentration increase. This suggests that the two types of sensilla have different functions. The ORNs of the trichoid sensilla may predominately analyze temporal features of the odor signal and the ORNs of the basiconic sensilla may be involved in extracting information on the identity of the odor source instead of mediating the spatial-temporal concentration pattern in an odor plume.