Ideas Lab Cracking the Olfactory Code: Followup PI Meeting (May 22, 2017); Arlington, VA

嗅觉是一种进化上的原始感觉，对整个动物界的生存至关重要--寻找食物、寻找配偶或避免捕食都依赖于检测、识别和辨别气味。虽然嗅觉加工的早期步骤相对较好地被理解，但在我们对高级气味表征和正在进行的行为过程中的加工的理解上仍然存在着显著的差距。破译嗅觉的工作原理需要开发创新和综合的方法，这些方法结合了新的理论框架、改进的数学模型和跨系统发育谱、实验方法和工程原理的新的行为范例。作为大脑倡议的一部分，2015年夏天组织了一个为期5天的聚焦Ideas实验室研讨会，将来自不同科学背景的研究人员聚集在一起，产生新的思维和创新的方法，这些方法将改变对行为背景下嗅觉处理的理解，同时产生新的机会来阐明大脑中感觉表征的一般性质。讲习班共向三个项目小组的17名研究人员颁发了三个奖项。本次研讨会汇集了物理学、工程学和神经科学领域的获奖者、受训者和专家，分享了项目令人兴奋的发展和发现。研讨会以所有学术水平的研究人员为特色，其中包括定量研究人员和神经科学家。讲习班的一个组成部分是广泛的跨学科互动。重要的是，这次研讨会是协调和调整机构间优先事项以实现大脑倡议目标的协调努力的一部分。研讨会预计将导致知识分享和综合团队方法的发展，以解决嗅觉处理和一般大脑中的感觉表征的性质。

Olfaction is an evolutionarily primitive sense critical for survival across the animal kingdom - finding food, searching for mates, or avoiding predation all depend on detecting, identifying, and discriminating odors. Although early steps in olfactory processing are relatively well understood, significant gaps remain in our understanding of higher-order odor representations and processing during on-going behavior. Deciphering the operating principles of olfaction requires the development of innovative and integrative approaches that combine novel theoretical frameworks, improved mathematical models, and novel behavioral paradigms across the phylogenetic spectrum, experimental methodologies, and engineering principles. As part of the BRAIN Initiative, a 5-day focused Ideas Lab workshop was organized in Summer 2015 to bring together researchers from diverse scientific backgrounds to engender fresh thinking and innovative approaches that will transform understanding of olfactory processing in behavioral contexts while spawning new opportunities to elucidate the general nature of sensory representations in the brain. The workshop resulted in three awards to a total of 17 researchers in three project teams. This current workshop brings together the awardees, trainees and experts in Physics, Engineering and Neuroscience to share the exciting developments and findings from the projects. The workshop features investigators at all academic levels with a mix of quantitative researchers and neuroscientists. An integral aspect of the workshop is extensive cross-disciplinary interaction. Importantly, this workshop is part of a concerted effort to coordinate and align interagency priorities to accomplish the goals of the BRAIN Initiative. The workshop is anticipated to result in sharing of knowledge and development of integrative team approaches to tackle the nature of olfactory processing and sensory representations in the brain in general.