How spike synchronization among olfactory neurons can contribute to sensory discrimination

Recent studies in honeybees have demonstrated that, when odor-evoked action potentials in antennal lobe neurons are pharmacologically desynchronized, the bees are impaired in their ability to discriminate chemically similar o dor stimuli. Using a reduced computational model of the honeybee antennal l obe, we show how changes in spike-synchronization properties alone, indepen dent of changes in overall spike-discharge rate or differences in activity levels among responsive neurons, can produce changes in associative learnin g similar to those observed experimentally.