Descripción del proyecto
Investigar cómo los mamíferos perciben el mundo a través del olfato
Descifrar la forma en que el cerebro extrae información importante del mundo externo en constante cambio constituye todo un reto. En el proyecto TempCOdE, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, se investigará cómo el sistema olfativo de los mamíferos extrae información del entorno a partir de la dinámica temporal de los olores. Para ello, sus investigadores aprovecharán los recientes avances en la presentación de estímulos olfativos dinámicos, el registro de actividad neuronal y algoritmos de visión artificial. Además, examinarán los mecanismos celulares y neurales que subyacen a la codificación de olores dinámicos y cómo se utilizan estos olores en el comportamiento de navegación. Los resultados del proyecto podrían ofrecer nuevos conocimientos sobre cómo se procesa la información sensorial. También podrían contribuir a dilucidar los mecanismos neuronales que permiten a los mamíferos comprender su entorno.
Objetivo
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.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitución de acogida
53127 Bonn
Alemania