Precise Holographic Manipulation of Olfactory Circuits Reveals Coding Features Determining Perceptual Detection.

Sensory systems transform the external world into time-varying spike trains. What features of spiking activity are used to guide behavior? In the mouse olfactory bulb, inhalation of different odors leads to changes in the set of neurons activated, as well as when neurons are activated relative to each other (synchrony) and the onset of inhalation (latency). To explore the relevance of each mode of information transmission, we probed the sensitivity of mice to perturbations across each stimulus dimension (i.e., rate, synchrony, and latency) using holographic two-photon optogenetic stimulation of olfactory bulb neurons with cellular and single-action-potential resolution. We found that mice can detect single action potentials evoked synchronously across <20 olfactory bulb neurons. Further, we discovered that detection depends strongly on the synchrony of activation across neurons, but not the latency relative to inhalation. • Perceptual detection of neural stimulation probed by two-photon holographic optogenetics • Mice can reliably detect single action potentials across <20 olfactory bulb neurons • Detection depends strongly on neuronal synchrony, but not latency relative to inhalation Using two-photon holographic optogenetics, Gill, Lerman et al. show that mice can reliably detect single spikes across small sets of targeted olfactory bulb neurons. They find that detection performance depends strongly on neuronal synchrony, but not on latency relative to inhalation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]