Event:

Many animals rely on olfaction to find food, choose mates and avoid predators. Although olfaction may not have a starring role in the human theater of life, odors have a well known ability to trigger strong emotions and evoke remote memories, perhaps because of rather direct connections to the limbic system. Mice and rats use around 1000 odorant receptor types to probe chemical space in the main olfactory system. Olfactory sensory neurons send their axons to the olfactory bulb, on whose surface there is a characteristic physical layout of input, but with no clear functional topography (unlike in other sensory systems). Incoming information is processed by the circuitry in the bulb before it is sent to several brain regions, including primary cortical areas. Odor processing in the olfactory bulb is also strongly modulated by feedback from the cortex as well as neuromodulatory centers. My research group has used different forms of optical microscopy, optogenetics and electrophysiology to investigate how odors are represented in the rodent olfactory bulb, and how this representation is transformed by local circuits and regulated by top-down influences. We have also begun to explore the functional organization of circuits receiving inputs from the olfactory bulb. I will present results from some recent and ongoing studies from my group, hoping to interest both experimental and theoretical neuroscientists.