Processing of Sensory Information in the Olfactory System: Minisymposium

The olfactory system is an attractive model system due to the easy control of sensory input and the experimental accessibility in animal studies. The odorant signals are processed from receptor neurons to a neural network of mitral and granular cells while various types of nonlinear behaviour can be observed. These are oscillations and fast adaptation, axonal pathfinding and sorting, as well as spatiotemporal pattern formation including contrast enhancement and travelling waves. A combination of different mathematical approaches like qualitative methods, bifurcation analysis, data analysis and equation-free techniques allow for a better reproduction and understanding of recent experimental findings. Talks: Olfaction as a Model System for Sensory-Processing Neural Networks (Jens Midtgaard, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) Nonlinear Effects of Signal Transduction in Olfactory Sensory Neurons (Peter Borowski, University of British Columbia, Canada; Juergen Reidl, University of Heidelberg, Germany; Jens Starke, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark; Martin Zapotocky, Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems, Germany; Markus Eiswirth, Fritz-Haber Institut, Germany; Anke Sensse, Bayer Technology Services) Axonal Pathfinding and Sorting in the Olfactory System (Noemi Hummel, ETH Zuerich, Switzerland; Simon Kokkendorff and Jens Starke, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark) Analysis of Macroscopic Network Activities (Jens Starke, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark; Carmen Ellsaesser, University of Heidelberg, Germany)