Descrizione del progetto
Un’indagine su come i mammiferi usano l’olfatto per percepire il mondo
Decifrare come il cervello estragga informazioni significative da circostanze esterne in costante cambiamento è una sfida impegnativa. Finanziato dal Consiglio europeo della ricerca, il progetto TempCOdE studierà come il sistema olfattivo dei mammiferi estragga informazioni sullo spazio a partire da dinamiche legate al tempo e agli odori. Per svolgere il proprio studio i ricercatori sfrutteranno i recenti progressi compiuti in ambiti quali stimoli odorosi dinamici, registrazioni dell’attività neurale e algoritmi di visione artificiale. Inoltre, studieranno i meccanismi cellulari e circuitali alla base della codifica degli odori dinamici e il modo in cui questi odori vengono utilizzati per studiare il comportamento di navigazione. I risultati del progetto potrebbero offrire nuovi indizi sul modo in cui vengono elaborate le informazioni sensoriali e svelare i meccanismi neurali che aiutano i mammiferi a comprendere l’ambiente circostante.
Obiettivo
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.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsIstituzione ospitante
53127 Bonn
Germania