Nicolas Fourcaud-Trocmé

Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 | UCBL · Centre de recherche en neurosciences de Lyon

In the olfactory bulb, mitral cells (MCs) display a spontaneous firing that is characterized by bursts of action potentials (APs) intermixed with silent periods. Intraburst firing frequency and duration are heterogeneous among MCs and increase with membrane depolarization. By using patch-clamp recording on rat slices, we dissected out the intrinsic...

A respiration-locked activity in the olfactory brain, mainly originating in the mechano-sensitivity of olfactory sensory neurons to air pressure, propagates from the olfactory bulb to the rest of the brain. Interestingly, changes in nasal airflow rate result in reorganization of olfactory bulb response. By leveraging spontaneous variations of respi...

A respiration-locked activity in the olfactory brain, mainly originating in the mechano-sensitivity of olfactory sensory neurons to air pressure, propagates from the olfactory bulb to the rest of the brain. Interestingly, changes in nasal airflow rate result in reorganization of olfactory bulb response. Therefore, if the respiratory drive of the br...

Beta rhythm (15–30 Hz) is a major candidate underlying long-range communication in the brain. In olfactory tasks, beta activity is strongly modulated by learning but its condition of expression and the network(s) responsible for its generation are unclear. Here we analyzed the emergence of beta activity in local field potentials recorded from olfac...

The thalamus plays a central role in sleep rhythms in the mammalian brain and, yet, surprisingly little is known about its function and interaction with local cortical oscillations during NREM sleep (NREM). We investigated the neuronal correlates of cortical barrel activity in the two corresponding thalamic nuclei, the ventral posterior medial (VPM...

In mammals, olfactory bulb (OB) dynamics are paced by slow and fast oscillatory rhythms at multiple levels: local field potential, spike discharge, and/or membrane potential oscillations. Interactions between these levels have been well studied for the slow rhythm linked to animal respiration. However, less is known regarding rhythms in the fast be...

Gamma (40-80Hz) and beta (15-40Hz) oscillations and their associated neuronal assemblies are key features of neuronal sensory processing. However, the mechanisms involved in either their interaction and/or the switch between these different regimes in most sensory systems remain misunderstood. The mammalian olfactory bulb (OB) expresses both gamma...

Gamma (∼40-90 Hz) and beta (∼15-40 Hz) oscillations and their associated neuronal assemblies are key features of neuronal sensory processing. However, the mechanisms involved in either their interaction and/or the switch between these different regimes in most sensory systems remain misunderstood. Based on in vivo recordings and biophysical modelin...

Afterhyperpolarization (AHP) is a principal feedback mechanism in the control of the frequency and patterning of neuronal firing. In principal projection neurons of the olfactory bulb, the mitral cells (MCs), the AHP is produced by three separate components: classical potassium-mediated hyperpolarization, and the excitatory and inhibitory component...

A prominent feature of olfactory bulb (OB) dynamics is the expression of characteristic local field potential (LFP) rhythms, including a slow respiration-related rhythm and two fast alternating oscillatory rhythms, beta (15-30 Hz) and gamma (40-90 Hz). All of these rhythms are implicated in olfactory coding. Fast oscillatory rhythms are known to in...

Odour perception depends closely on nutritional status, in animals as in humans. Insulin, the principal anorectic hormone, appears to be one of the major candidates for ensuring the link between olfactory abilities and nutritional status, by modifying processing in the olfactory bulb (OB), one of its main central targets. The present study investig...

In mammals, the main olfactory bulb (MOB) is driven by air flow respiratory input into the nose. This slow (2-10 Hz) rhythmic input can be observed both at the local field potential (LFP) level, single cell discharge pattern level and intracellular slow oscillations of mitral cells (principal cells of the MOB). Using intracellular recordings in fre...

A slow respiration-related rhythm strongly shapes the activity of the olfactory bulb. This rhythm appears as a slow oscillation that is detectable in the membrane potential, the respiration-related spike discharge of the mitral/tufted cells and the bulbar local field potential. Here, we investigated the rules that govern the manifestation of membra...

Model analysis demonstrating how a silent oscillation can induce a synchronized discharge. (DOC)

Is faster or stronger sniffing important for the olfactory system? Odorant molecules are captured by sniffing. The features of sniffing constrain both the temporality and intensity of the input to the olfactory structures. In this context, it is clear that variations in both the sniff frequency and flow rate have a major impact on the activation of...

In the rat olfactory bulb (OB), fast oscillations of the local field potential (LFP) are observed during the respiratory cycle. Gamma-range oscillations (40-90 Hz) occur at the end of inspiration, followed by beta-range oscillations (15-30 Hz) during exhalation. These oscillations are highly stereotypical, and their frequencies are stable under var...

The dynamics of the mammalian olfactory bulb (OB) is characterized by local field potential (LFP) oscillations either slow, in the theta range (2-10Hz, tightly linked to the respiratory rhythm), or fast, in the beta (15-30Hz) or gamma (40-90Hz) range. These fast oscillations are known to be modulated by odorant features [1] and animal experience or...

In the rat olfactory bulb (OB), fast oscillations of the local field potential (LFP) are observed during the respiratory cycle. Gamma-range oscillations (60Hz) occurat the end of inspiration, followed by beta-range oscillations (15-20Hz) during exhalation. These oscillations are highly stereotyped, and their frequencies are stable under various con...

Local field potential (LFP) oscillations are often accompanied by synchronization of activity within a widespread cerebral area. Thus, the LFP and neuronal coherence appear to be the result of a common mechanism that underlies neuronal assembly formation. We used the olfactory bulb as a model to investigate: (1) the extent to which unitary dynamics...

or> Meeting abstracts - A single PDF containing all abstracts in this Supplement is available here. http://www. biomedcentral.co m/content/pdf/14 71-2202 -10-S1-info.pdf< /url>

Progress in experimental tools and design is allowing the acquisition of increasingly large datasets. Storage, manipulation and efficient analyses of such large amounts of data is now a primary issue. We present OpenElectrophy, an electrophysiological data- and analysis-sharing framework developed to fill this niche. It stores all experiment data a...

Les techniques expérimentales récentes permettent d'acquérir de grandes quantités de données. Le stockage et le traitement efficace de ces données est donc désormais une question fondamentale. Dans ce cadre, nous avons développé le logiciel libre OpenElectrophy initalement concu pour traiter des données électrophysiologiques, écrit avec le langage...

Oscillations are a common feature of odor-evoked and spontaneous activity in the olfactory system in vivo and in vitro and are thought to play an important role in information processing and memory in a variety of brain areas. Theoretical and experimental studies have described several mechanisms by which oscillations can be generated and synchroni...

We review and extend recent results on the instantaneous firing rate dynamics of simplified models of spiking neurons in response to noisy current inputs. It has been shown recently that the response of the instantaneous firing rate to small amplitude oscillations in the mean inputs depends in the large frequency limit f on the spike initiation dyn...

This study examines the ability of neurons to track temporally varying inputs, namely by investigating how the instantaneous firing rate of a neuron is modulated by a noisy input with a small sinusoidal component with frequency (f). Using numerical simulations of conductance-based neurons and analytical calculations of one-variable nonlinear integr...

Cortical neurons in vivo undergo a continuous bombardment due to synaptic activity, which acts as a major source of noise. Here, we investigate the effects of the noise filtering by synapses with various levels of realism on integrate-and-fire neuron dynamics. The noise input is modeled by white (for instantaneous synapses) or colored (for synapses...

Noise can have a significant impact on the response dynamics of a nonlinear system. For neurons, the primary source of noise comes from background synaptic input activity. If this is approximated as white noise, the amplitude of the modulation of the firing rate in response to an input current oscillating at frequency omega decreases as 1/square ro...