Topic: primary olfactory cortex

Activity in primary sensory areas is robustly driven by signals from their respective sensory inputs. However, both theory and experiment suggest that the same cortices are modulated by context-dependent internally generated activity. Predictive coding theories propose that generative models formed through learning modulate primary sensory responses on a moment-to-moment basis according to how well incoming signals conform to the animal’s predictions. Experimental data has shown that prediction errors can alter neural responses, even in the absence of behavioral relevance. Yet several aspects

Estimating the statistics of events occurring around us is a crucial feature for survival. However, how the brain achieves this is poorly understood. We devised an odor-discrimination task in which mice could utilize preceding odor cues to estimate the probability of encountering a followed rewarded or non-rewarded odor. Recording the neural activity during task performance in the primary olfactory cortex, we found two non-overlapping neuronal subpopulations that encoded the odor-probability contingencies. One subset of neurons ramped its firing rate between the cue and the predicted odor onse

The primary olfactory cortex (piriform cortex) is a well-established epileptogenic site with the potential to amplify and generalize seizures. Disinhibition, caused by the synaptic inhibition of inhibitory neurons by other inhibitory neurons, increases the excitability of principal neurons and has been proposed as a contributing factor in numerous neurological diseases, including epilepsy. Therefore, unravelling inhibitory microcircuits in the piriform cortex may uncover new therapeutic avenues for treating epilepsy. Our study used whole-cell recordings from identified classes of inhibitory in