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Student 10-Minute Presentation

Physiology, Biochemistry, and Toxicology

Student

Student Regular 10-min: MUVE, PBT, and SysEB

Bimodal integration of olfactory and mechanosensory information in the antennal lobe of the honeybee Apis mellifera

Sunday, November 10, 2024
1:42 PM – 1:54 PM MST
Location: Phoenix Convention Center, 224 A, PCC
Oral Presentation

Multimodal sensation is a process by which an organism integrates information from multiple sensory modalities to more efficiently process information about a given stimulus and generate the appropriate response. Much work has been done showing the links between different senses, and how they affect one another in the context of dysfunction in this integrative process leading to sensory deficits indicative of a wide range of conditions. However, while the nature of multimodality is well-understood behaviorally, the work on its neurological underpinnings is relatively sparse. We studied the relationship between olfactory and mechanosensory inputs to the honeybee antennal lobe (AL) as part of a larger project on bimodal integration. Honeybees are an ideal model for this work, as their olfactory system has been well described and their antennae are highly multimodal organs, capable of sensing olfactory, mechanosensory, gustatory, and auditory inputs. To separate the mechanical and olfactory components of olfactory stimuli, this experiment establishes a complex interaction between wind speed and odor concentration, which when combined in various schemes produce responses that differ significantly in spiking rate, inter-spike interval, and response timing. These differences can be seen both between units, as well as within a single unit, depending on the specific parameters of the stimulus presented. Altogether, these results suggest that mechanosensory response is indeed an integrated part of olfactory perception. Further work on this project will expand to other tightly linked components of olfactory responses, i.e. thermosensitivity, as well as incorporating the corresponding behavioral response in the honeybee antennal movements.