A microcomputer-controlled response measurement and analysis system for insect olfactory receptor neurons.

A microcomputer system has been built to stimulate, record, and analyze responses from peripheral insect olfactory receptor neurons. Software has been developed to sort action potentials (spikes) in extracellular records obtained from multi-innervated antennal sensilla, and perform frequency, interspike interval, distributional, and regression analyses on responses in groups of records. The olfactory stimuli can be presented in different patterns, and plots or histograms of analyses, spike records, and individual spikes can be displayed in different formats and hard-copied during a recording session. This report describes the main features of the system and discusses the methods used for sorting spikes, performing analyses, and managing records and analyses in a database. Examples are given of renewal density analyses for 4 classes of peripheral receptor neuron in records from 2 types of olfactory sensillum on the antenna of the cabbage looper moth, Trichoplusia ni (Hübner).