To understand the neural bases of this inhibition and its possible odour specificity, we carried out a detailed analysis of the response characteristics of the different neuron types from the periphery to the central level. We examined the response patterns of pheromone-sensitive and plant volatile-sensitive neurons in virgin and mated male Dinaciclib mw moths. By using intracellular recordings, we showed that mating changes the

response characteristics of pheromone-sensitive antennal lobe (AL) neurons, and thus decreases their sensitivity to sex pheromone. Individual olfactory receptor neuron (ORN) recordings and calcium imaging experiments indicated that pheromone sensory input remains constant. On the other hand, calcium responses to non-pheromonal odours (plant volatiles) increased after mating, as reflected

by increased firing frequencies of plant-sensitive AL neurons, although ORN responses to heptanal remained unchanged. We suggest that differential processing of pheromone and plant odours allows mated males to transiently block their central pheromone detection system, and increase non-pheromonal odour detection in order to efficiently locate CDK inhibitor food sources. “
“Detecting a change in a visual stimulus is particularly difficult when it is accompanied by a visual disruption such as a saccade or flicker. In order to say whether a stimulus has changed across such a disruption, some unless neural trace must persist. Here we investigated whether two different regions of the human extrastriate visual cortex contain neuronal populations encoding such a trace. Participants viewed a stimulus that included various objects and a short blank period (flicker)

made it difficult to distinguish whether an object in the stimulus had changed or not. By applying transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during the visual disruption we show that the lateral occipital (LO) cortex, but not the occipital face area, contains a sustained representation of a visual stimulus. TMS over LO improved the sensitivity and response bias for detecting changes by selectively reducing false alarms. We suggest that TMS enhanced the initial object representation and thus boosted neural events associated with object repetition. Our findings show that neuronal signals in the human LO cortex carry a sustained neural trace that is necessary for detecting the repetition of a stimulus. “
“Aged humans exhibit severe deficits in visual motion perception and contrast sensitivity under various levels of spatial and temporal modulation. Previous studies indicated that many of these deficits are probably mediated by the neural degradation of the central visual system.