Topic: anterior piriform cortex

Odor cues from distant objects are sparse and highly fluctuating due to turbulent transport. However, whether animals can use these spatiotemporally varying statistics for decision-making is unclear. To address this question, we built a custom olfactometer to deliver discrete and brief (~40 ms halfwidth) odor pulses at arbitrary Poisson-distributed pulse rates. We then developed a behavioral task in which head-restrained, water-restricted mice had to make binary decisions based on the total odor pulse count in 5 seconds to obtain a water reward (Figures A-B). Performance in the task approached

It is well known that the state of hunger can modulate hormones and hypothalamic neural circuits to drive food-seeking behavior and consumption. While the olfactory sense is critical to foraging, the role of the olfactory cortex in regulating food learning and preference is unclear. The anterior piriform cortex (APC) is located one synapse downstream of the olfactory bulb and is an important olfactory structure for odor discrimination, perception, and memory. Here, we investigated whether acute fasting in mice can alter an odor-guided foraging behavior and how it can alter neurons and synapses

A central principle of most sensory cortices is that they are topographically organized- neurons close to each other have similar tuning properties, varying along a physical stimulus feature. Such an organization has not been found yet in the olfactory system. This is because odors constitute discrete objects that do not vary along a specific physical dimension. Here, we have developed a method to reveal the receptive field (RF) of anterior piriform cortex (aPC) neurons. The RF is defined as the glomeruli set that affects the recorded aPC neuron. We found that, on average, an aPC neuron RF com