Testing effects of trigeminal stimulation on binary odor mixture quality in rats

Frontiers in Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Huibo Li¹  Leslie M. Kay²  Clara Lee³ 

[1] Department of Psychology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States;Institute for Mind and Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States;Department of Psychology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States;Institute for Mind and Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States;The College, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States;The College, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States;

关键词: odor mixture;    trigeminal;    overshadowing;    two-alternative choice;    partial reinforcement;    binary mixture perception;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnins.2023.1059741

 received in 2022-10-02, accepted in 2023-02-16,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Prior attempts at forming theoretical predictions regarding the quality of binary odor mixtures have failed to find any consistent predictor for overshadowing of one component in a binary mixture by the other. We test here the hypothesis that trigeminality contributes to overshadowing effects in binary mixture perception. Most odorants stimulate the trigeminal nerve in the nasal sensory epithelium. In the current study we test rats’ ability to detect component odorants in four binary odor sets chosen for their relative trigeminality. We predicted that the difference in trigeminal intensity would predict the degree of overshadowing by boosting or suppressing perceptual intensity of these odorants during learning or during mixture perception. We used a two-alternative choice (TAC) task in which rats were trained to recognize the two components of each mixture and tested on a range of mixtures of the two without reinforcement. We found that even though odorant concentrations were adjusted to balance volatility, all odor sets produced asymmetric psychometric curves. Odor pairs with the greatest difference in trigeminality showed overshadowing by the odorant with weaker trigeminal properties. Odor sets with more evenly matched trigeminal properties also showed asymmetry that was not predicted by either small differences in volatility or trigeminality. Thus, trigeminal properties may influence overshadowing in odor mixtures, but other factors are also likely involved. These mixed results further support the need to test each odor mixture to determine its odor quality and underscore recent results at the level of olfactory receptor neurons that show massive and unpredictable inhibition among odorants in complex mixtures.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Li, Lee and Kay.