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Chemical Senses Advance Access originally published online on April 10, 2009
Chemical Senses 2009 34(5):425-433; doi:10.1093/chemse/bjp016
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

An Odor Stimulator Controlling Odor Temporal Pattern Applicable in Insect Olfaction Study

Koutaroh Okada and Masayuki Sakuma

Division of Applied Biosciences, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan

Correspondence to be sent to: Masayuki Sakuma, Division of Applied Biosciences, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan. e-mail: sakuma{at}kais.kyoto-u.ac.jp


  Abstract

The olfactory system of an insect brain codes for information about odorant quality and quantity using the temporal pattern of neural activity as well as neurons' firing. Although an accurate odor temporal pattern is indispensable for investigations of olfactory systems, it is difficult to control in conventional odor stimulators. To overcome this problem, we fabricated an odor stimulator that can control the odor temporal pattern. The stimulator has 3 major parts: an "odor conditioner," with odor-laden air prepared with known concentrations of odorants; a Pitot tube; and a small wind tunnel of laminar flow. Using this stimulator, we realized not only timing control of the odor stimulation with millisecond order but also constant odor concentrations or intensity of stimulation, with error of 2.4% in replicated trials.

Key words: laminar flow, odor concentration, photoionization detector, PIC, Pitot tube, wind tunnel

Accepted 12 March 2009


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