Olfactory Computations and Network Oscillations

Oscillatory activity is a universal design feature of olfactory systems (Tank et al., 1994), having been demonstrated by Lord Adrian in the olfactory bulb of the hedgehog 60 years ago (Adrian, 1942). Hints as to the computational role of olfactory oscillations have only recently begun to emerge (Stopfer et al., 1997; Teyke and Gelperin, 1999; Nusser et al., 2001) (but see Fletcher et al., 2005). The effort to understand the role of olfactory oscillations is aided by insights from computational models of olfactory networks incorporating realistic dynamics at the cellular and network levels (Linster and Cleland, 2001; Davison et al., 2003; Ermentrout et al., 2004; Sivan and Kopell, 2004; Bazhenov et al., 2005; Galan et al., 2005; Migliore et al., 2005). I will review some of the major issues we face in attempts to understand the computational and behavioral roles of olfactory oscillations (Gelperin, 1999), in the context of more general efforts to understand cortical oscillations in a variety of sensory processing and motor control pathways (Salinas and Sejnowski, 2001; Buzsaki and Draguhn, 2004; Borgers et al., 2005; Mann and Paulsen, 2005; Schnitzler and Gross, 2005).