Article abstract
Nature Neuroscience 10, 1176 - 1184 (2007)
Published online: 29 July 2007 | doi:10.1038/nn1947
Adaptive regulation of sparseness by feedforward inhibition
Collins Assisi1, Mark Stopfer2, Gilles Laurent3 & Maxim Bazhenov1
Abstract
In the mushroom body of insects, odors are represented by very few spikes in a small number of neurons, a highly efficient strategy known as sparse coding. Physiological studies of these neurons have shown that sparseness is maintained across thousand-fold changes in odor concentration. Using a realistic computational model, we propose that sparseness in the olfactory system is regulated by adaptive feedforward inhibition. When odor concentration changes, feedforward inhibition modulates the duration of the temporal window over which the mushroom body neurons may integrate excitatory presynaptic input. This simple adaptive mechanism could maintain the sparseness of sensory representations across wide ranges of stimulus conditions.
- The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.
- US National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 35 Lincoln Drive, MSC 3715, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.
- California Institute of Technology, 1201 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
Correspondence to: Maxim Bazhenov1 e-mail: bazhenov@salk.edu
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