Topic: olfactory cues

Vision plays a crucial role in instructing the brain’s spatial navigation systems. In the absence of vision, the remaining sensory systems attempt to fill in the previously dominated role of vision. However, how the brain’s navigational system is affected, as well as the strategies it adapts to facilitate spatial awareness following vision loss remains an open question. To explore this, we recorded from head direction (HD) cells in the anterior dorsal nucleus (ADn) of the thalamus in freely moving sighted and blind animals. First, we found that both congenitally blind and late-onset blind anim

Animal ability to orient and navigate requires selecting appropriate motor responses based on the perception and integration of the environmental information. This is the case of the optokinetic response (OKR) in D. melanogaster, where optic flow visual stimulation modulates walking or flying patterns. Despite a large body of literature on OKR, there is still limited understanding about the impact on OKR of concomitant, potentially conflictual, inputs originating from other sensory channels, as happens in the environment (multimodal integration). We combined optic flow stimulation with the pre

Knowing how to behave in the presence of an aggressive conspecific is essential for an individual's survival. For many rodents, olfactory cues are crucial for the animal to identify conspecifics and behave properly. An important region for the expression of social defense is the medial amygdala (MeA). This brain region receives projections from neurons in the accessory olfactory bulb (AOB) and processes olfactory cues from conspecifics. The MeA is enriched by glutamatergic (VGLUT2) and GABAergic (VGAT) neurons. Interestingly, GABAergic neurons are predominantly located in the posterodorsal par