Topic: perceptual weighing

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