Spatiotemporal coding in the olfactory system

Abstract

Beginning in 1994, Gilles Laurent and colleagues published a series of studies describing odor-induced field potential oscillations in the locust olfactory system. While field oscillations had been described in the olfactory system previously- beginning with the work of Lord Adrian in the 1940s and including the extensive studies performed by Walter Freeman and colleagues and the later work of Gelperin and colleagues-the Laurent laboratory's work emerged at a time in which oscillations and spike synchronization in the visual system were attracting substantial attention, such that the emergence of this work triggered a renewed interest in the temporal properties of olfactory system activation and what it implied for the representation of odor stimuli.