Project description
Investigating how mammals use olfaction to perceive the world
Deciphering how the brain pulls meaningful information from constantly changing external circumstances is a great challenge. Funded by the European Research Council, the TempCOdE project will investigate how the mammalians’ sense of smell (olfactory system) extracts information about space from temporal odour dynamics. For their study, researchers will leverage recent advances in dynamic odour stimuli, neural activity recordings and machine vision algorithms. Furthermore, they will investigate the cellular and circuit mechanisms that underlie the encoding of dynamic odours and how these odours are utilised to investigate navigation behaviour. Project findings could offer insight into how sensory information is processed and uncover the neural mechanisms that help mammals understand their surroundings.
Objective
A fundamental challenge for the brain is to extract relevant information from an ever changing external world. Natural odours are in a constant state of flux. Turbulent airflow shapes odours into spatiotemporally complex plumes that carry information about the olfactory scenery and provide vital clues about the location of, for example, food sources or predators. How the mammalian olfactory system extracts information about space from temporal odour dynamics, however, is still not well understood.
Recent methodological advances in presenting dynamic odour stimuli, neural activity recordings and machine-vision algorithms now offer the exciting opportunity to address this fundamental question. Using a multidisciplinary approach, this project will uncover how temporally complex odour information is processed across the olfactory system and how odour dynamics give rise to behaviour.
We will first investigate how temporally complex odour information is represented across key structures of the mammalian olfactory system using in vivo physiology. This will provide important groundwork for the next step, elucidating the cellular and circuit mechanisms underlying the encoding of dynamic odours in the early olfactory system. Finally, we will study which features of temporally complex odours are used for navigation behaviour by simultaneously recording and correlating the animal’s respiration sampling strategy, the dynamic odour profile encountered by the animal and neural activity from early and higher order olfactory areas in freely moving mice.
By combining cellular and systems neuroscience with behavioural investigations, we aim to directly assess how mammals use olfaction to extract information about space from time. I strongly believe that this innovative research programme will generate novel and highly generalizable insights into how naturalistic sensory information is processed and that it will uncover neural mechanisms that give rise to our perception of the world.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences neurobiology
- medical and health sciences basic medicine physiology
- natural sciences biological sciences biological behavioural sciences
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2022-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
53127 BONN
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.