Representation of Odor Information in the Olfactory System: From Biology to an Artificial Nose

The olfactory systems of animals as diverse as insects and primates are well-known for having extraordinary sensitivity while, at the same time, exhibiting broad discriminative abilities. These properties, often mutually exclusive in other chemical recognition systems, appear to arise from the parallel, distributed nature of the processes that underlie how odors are encoded at each level in the olfactory pathway in the brain. In this paper we describe how we have tried to characterize the physiological aspects of these processes in biological experiments, capture these processes in a computational model, and then to use these observations to design and build a biologically inspired artificial device. The Tufts Medical School Nose has achieved a degree of sensitivity and discriminability that, for certain compounds under defined conditions, approaches that of its biological parent.

[1]  D. Wilson,et al.  Habituation of odor responses in the rat anterior piriform cortex. , 1998, Journal of neurophysiology.

[2]  J. Kauer,et al.  Responses of olfactory bulb neurones to odour stimulation of small nasal areas in the salamander , 1974, The Journal of physiology.

[3]  D. Wilson,et al.  Frequency-dependent modulation of inhibition in the rat olfactory bulb , 1999, Neuroscience Letters.

[4]  T. Getchell,et al.  Neurogenesis in olfactory epithelium: loss and recovery of transepithelial voltage transients following olfactory nerve section. , 1981, Journal of neurophysiology.

[5]  Gordon M. Shepherd,et al.  Discrimination of molecular signals by the olfactory receptor neuron , 1994, Neuron.

[6]  D Schild,et al.  Transduction mechanisms in vertebrate olfactory receptor cells. , 1998, Physiological reviews.

[7]  T. Finger,et al.  Neurobiology of taste and smell , 1987 .

[8]  Linda B. Buck,et al.  A zonal organization of odorant receptor gene expression in the olfactory epithelium , 1993, Cell.

[9]  J S Kauer,et al.  Emergent properties of odor information coding in a representational model of the salamander olfactory bulb , 1992, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[10]  P. Graziadei,et al.  Cell dynamics in the olfactory mucosa. , 1973, Tissue & cell.

[11]  Naoshige Uchida,et al.  Odor maps in the mammalian olfactory bulb: domain organization and odorant structural features , 2000, Nature Neuroscience.

[12]  G M Shepherd,et al.  A Molecular Vocabulary for Olfaction a , 1987, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[13]  Linda B. Buck,et al.  Genetic tracing reveals a stereotyped sensory map in the olfactory cortex , 2001, Nature.

[14]  L. Buck,et al.  Information coding in the mammalian olfactory system. , 1996, Cold Spring Harbor symposia on quantitative biology.

[15]  J. Kauer,et al.  Rapid analyte recognition in a device based on optical sensors and the olfactory system. , 1996, Analytical chemistry.

[16]  B. Slotnick,et al.  Detection and discrimination of propionic acid after removal of its 2-DG identified major focus in the olfactory bulb: a psychophysical analysis , 1997, Brain Research.

[17]  James M. Phelan,et al.  Progress on determining the vapor signature of a buried land mine , 1999, Defense, Security, and Sensing.

[18]  J S Kauer,et al.  Salamander olfactory bulb neuronal activity observed by video rate, voltage-sensitive dye imaging. II. Spatial and temporal properties of responses evoked by electric stimulation. , 1995, Journal of neurophysiology.

[19]  D. Walt,et al.  A fibre-optic chemical sensor with discrete sensing sites , 1991, Nature.

[20]  L. Haberly,et al.  Parallel-distributed processing in olfactory cortex: new insights from morphological and physiological analysis of neuronal circuitry. , 2001, Chemical senses.

[21]  R. Hudson,et al.  From molecule to mind: the role of experience in shaping olfactory function , 1999, Journal of Comparative Physiology A.

[22]  B. Ache,et al.  Towards a common strategy for transducing olfactory information. , 1994, Seminars in cell biology.

[23]  J S Kauer,et al.  Imaging and coding in the olfactory system. , 2001, Annual review of neuroscience.

[24]  K. Mori,et al.  The olfactory bulb: coding and processing of odor molecule information. , 1999, Science.

[25]  D. Wilson,et al.  Odor specificity of habituation in the rat anterior piriform cortex. , 2000, Journal of neurophysiology.

[26]  R. Anholt.  Molecular neurobiology of olfaction. , 1993, Critical reviews in neurobiology.

[27]  Rainer W. Friedrich,et al.  Chemotopic, Combinatorial, and Noncombinatorial Odorant Representations in the Olfactory Bulb Revealed Using a Voltage-Sensitive Axon Tracer , 1998, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[28]  C. Ham,et al.  Structure-activity studies of musk odorants using pattern recognition: monocyclic nitrobenzenes , 1985 .

[29]  K. Persaud,et al.  Analysis of discrimination mechanisms in the mammalian olfactory system using a model nose , 1982, Nature.

[30]  L. C. Katz,et al.  Optical Imaging of Odorant Representations in the Mammalian Olfactory Bulb , 1999, Neuron.

[31]  G. Shepherd,et al.  Mechanisms of olfactory discrimination: converging evidence for common principles across phyla. , 1997, Annual review of neuroscience.

[32]  T. Swager,et al.  Fluorescent Porous Polymer Films as TNT Chemosensors: Electronic and Structural Effects , 1998 .

[33]  J. Kauer,et al.  Are there structural and functional modules in the vertebrate olfactory bulb? , 1993, Microscopy research and technique.

[34]  P. Mombaerts,et al.  Molecular biology of odorant receptors in vertebrates. , 1999, Annual review of neuroscience.

[35]  R. Hudson,et al.  Regional autonomy in the peripheral processing of odor signals in newborn rabbits , 1987, Brain Research.

[36]  Richard Axel,et al.  Topographic organization of sensory projections to the olfactory bulb , 1994, Cell.

[37]  John S. Kauer,et al.  Contributions of topography and parallel processing to odor coding in the vertebrate olfactory pathway , 1991, Trends in Neurosciences.