Question

Are individual odors recognized by a labeled line strategy or by computing the acticiry from ensembles of neurons? Which system is involved in recognition of tastes?

Answer 1

Individual odors recognized by computing the acticiry from ensembles of neurons.

The perception of odors is mediated by the olfactory nerve. The ability to recognize individuals or their genetic relatedness plays an important role in social behavior so olfactory learning and recognition of chemosensory individuality have evolved. Recent study found that despite considerable trial-to-trial variability, odor identity can accurately be decoded from ensembles of co-active neurons that are distributed across the piriform cortex (The function of the piriform cortex relates to the sense of smell) without any apparent spatial organization.

However, piriform response patterns change substantially over a 100-fold change in odor concentration, apparently degrading the population representation of odor identity. piriform response patterns across the population change substantially with increasing odorant concentration, potentially confounding odor identification. However, a substantial fraction of odor-selective piriform neurons exhibit largely concentration-invariant odor responses, and odor identity - independent of intensity - could accurately be decoded from this subpopulation of piriform neurons.

The gustatory system is the sensory system that is partially responsible for the perception of taste.

Gustatory or taste cells react to food and beverages. These surface cells in the mouth send taste information to their nerve fibers. The taste cells are clustered in the taste buds of the mouth, tongue, and throat. Many of the small bumps that can be seen on the tongue contain taste buds. As the gustatory system senses both harmful and beneficial things, all basic taste modalities are classified as either aversive or appetitive.