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| Poster #104 From nostrils to olfactory receptor: Temporal precision of odor stimuli during sniffing |
| Zhenxing Wu1, John Scott2, Kai Zhao1 1Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States 2Department of Cell Biology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, United States |
The dynamics of airflow and odor transport during sniffing, which varies across species and depends on task, may play a pivotal role in modulating odorant stimuli and its temporal pattern. Here, we used a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to simulate the nasal aerodynamics and transport of various odorants with different solubilities in a rat and compared the results with the temporal neural activities measured by electro-olfactogram (EOG) under the same breathing frequencies (ranging from 0.5 Hz to 5 Hz). Our findings revealed a clear delay in the odor onset at the olfactory mucosa as compared to sniffing onset (from t=0.11±0.01s to 0.37±0.08s) that significantly correlated to the solubility of odorants, e.g., r=0.82, p<0.01 at 1Hz, r=0.77, p<0.05 at 2.5 Hz. Additionally, we observed a significant phase shift between the peak of odor absorption and the peak of sniffing (from 27% to 105% of the sniffing cycle) that significantly correlated with odorant solubility (e.g., r=0.84, p<0.01 at 1Hz; r=0.80, p<0.01 at 2.5 Hz) and increased with breathing frequencies. At the extreme, the odor sorption may peak at the exhalation phase or even at the inhalation phase of the next sniffing cycle. Furthermore, the peak absorption would continue to rise over several sniffing cycles (from 1 to 4 cycles) before reaching a high plateau. The EOG measurements closely matched the CFD simulation, validating our simulation results. This study highlights the importance of odor transport in preprocessing olfactory stimuli and that sniffing may function as an aerodynamic trap to accumulate (i.e., rising absorption peaks) and scramble odor stimuli (i.e., temporal shift) depending on odor solubility and sniffing frequencies, with key implications for temporal precision, olfactory coding, and sensory adaptation. |