The Journal of Neurophysiology Vol. 81 No. 3 March 1999, pp. 1231-1241
Copyright ©1999 by the American Physiological Society

Coherent Oscillations in Membrane Potential Synchronize Impulse Bursts in Central Olfactory Neurons of the Crayfish

Department of Biology and Center for Biological Timing, University of Virginia, Charlottesville Virginia 22903

Mellon Jr., DeForest and Christopher J. Wheeler. Coherent oscillations in membrane potential synchronize impulse bursts in central olfactory neurons of the crayfish. Lateral protocerebral interneurons (LPIs) in the central olfactory pathway of the freshwater crayfish Procambarus clarkii reside within the lateral protocerebrum and receive direct input from projection neurons of the olfactory midbrain. The LPIs exhibit periodic (0.5 Hz) changes in membrane potential that are imposed on them synaptically. Acute surgical experiments indicate that the synaptic activity originates from a group of oscillatory neurons lying within the lateral protocerebrum. Simultaneous intracellular recordings from many LPI pairs indicate that this periodic synaptic input is synchronous and coherent among the population of ~200 LPIs on each side of the brain. In many LPIs, specific odors applied to antennules in isolated head preparations generate long-lasting excitatory postsynaptic potentials and impulse bursts. The impulse bursts are generated only near the peaks of the ongoing depolarizations, ~1 s after stimulus application, and so the periodic baseline activity is instrumental in timing burst generation. Simultaneous recordings from pairs of LPIs show that, when impulse bursts occur in both cells after an odorant stimulus, they are synchronized by the common periodic depolarizations. We conclude that the common, periodic activity in LPIs can synchronize impulse bursts in subsets of these neurons, possibly generating powerful long-lasting postsynaptic effects in downstream target neurons.