Summary
Olfactory discrimination ofDrosophila melanogaster WT Berlin was determined in a learning paradigm.
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Single compound discrimination: Differential sensitivity as a function of the absolute odor concentration was high over three orders of magnitude for 4-methylcyclohexanol (M). For 3-octanol (O) the dependence had two maxima. This may be due to different receptor types, which are sensitive to the same chemical, but at different concentrations. For M the concentration sensitivity ranges may overlap, for O they may be separated. — Masking experiments indicate reciprocal inhibition between perception of the two odors. This inhibition probably does not take place at the receptor site.
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Multicompound discrimination: Concentration differences were compared with differences in composition. In a certain range of the reference odor, differences in composition were more easily detected than differences in concentration. — In contrast to former propositions (Kramer 1976) discrimination between different concentrations of a multicomponent odor was not the sum of discrimination values for the respective single components, but in all cases tested was equal or even lower than the highest single component value.
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A model is proposed with the following features: The discrimination between the two odors is directly proportional to the sum of the excitation differences in each receptor channel (corresponding to the output of a receptor) after the mean excitation level of all channels has been subtracted from each single one. Under certain circumstances this provides a concentration invariant receptor pattern.
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Borst, A. Computation of olfactory signals inDrosophila melanogaster . J. Comp. Physiol. 152, 373–383 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00606242
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00606242