Description du projet
Étudier la manière dont les mammifères se servent de l’odorat pour percevoir le monde
Déchiffrer la manière dont le cerveau tire des informations utiles de circonstances extérieures en constante évolution est un défi de taille. Financé par le Conseil européen de la recherche, le projet TempCOdE se propose d’étudier comment l’odorat des mammifères (système olfactif) extrait des informations concernant l’espace à partir de la dynamique temporelle des odeurs. Les chercheurs s’appuieront sur de récentes avancées en matière de stimuli olfactifs dynamiques, d’enregistrements de l’activité neuronale et d’algorithmes de vision artificielle. Ils étudieront également les mécanismes cellulaires et circulaires qui sous-tendent l’encodage des odeurs dynamiques et la manière dont ces odeurs sont utilisées pour étudier le comportement de navigation. Les résultats du projet pourraient permettre de mieux comprendre la manière dont les mammifères traitent les informations sensorielles et de découvrir les mécanismes neuronaux qui les aident à appréhender leur environnement.
Objectif
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.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitution d’accueil
53127 Bonn
Allemagne