Active sensation and search strategy during mouse odor plume-guided navigation

项目摘要 化学感觉是生物体中一种进化上保守的感觉方式。 嗅觉是化学感觉的一种模式，已被证明可以指导动物的导航和决策。 不同的门。然而，使用嗅觉作为感官线索来引导导航是一个复杂的问题。 问题.这是因为气味分子在大距离上的传播是由混沌和 流体从源头到源头的湍流。因此，动物接收到的嗅觉信息 沿着不同的空间尺度动态地变化沿着不同的空间尺度。尽管有这种复杂的感觉信号，啮齿动物 在远距离定位空气中气味的来源方面非常出色。随机嗅觉信息 在烟羽追踪的自然行为过程中， 信息，并实施有效的行为策略来定位气味源。啮齿动物的嗅觉 系统，然后作为一个很好的模型，研究如何感觉引导运动，反之亦然，在 哺乳动物的大脑 目前可用于化学定量的技术不可行，无法将实时气味 自由移动的动物的行为输入。因此，我们首先开发了一种实时记录嗅觉的方法， 使用可以安装在鼠标头上的低成本传感器获取信息。该方法允许 在研究气味接触如何引导羽追踪小鼠的行为方面，这是前所未有的分析水平。这里我 我提出实验，将联合收割机这种方法与行为跟踪相结合，以了解气味的主动感知 信息以及参与气味源的小鼠在羽流追踪期间采用的行为策略 本地化任务。这些行为学研究将为研究大脑皮层的神经基础奠定基础。 在烟羽追踪的自然行为过程中的感觉运动整合。定义神经生理学 气味引导导航的基础将有助于理解人类大脑如何整合感觉 和运动，以及治疗改变这种整合的疾病，如精神分裂症和后精神分裂症。 创伤应激障碍

Project Summary Chemosensation is an evolutionarily conserved sensory modality throughout the living organisms. Olfaction, one mode of chemosensation, has been shown to guide navigation and decision-making in animals of different phyla within the kingdom. However, using olfaction as a sensory cue to guide navigation is a complex problem. This is because the spread of odor molecules over large distances is governed by the chaotic and turbulent flow of fluids from the source to the searcher. Hence, the olfactory information that an animal receives dynamically varies along the different spatial scales. In spite of this complex sensory signal, rodents are remarkable at locating sources of airborne odors from large distances. The stochastic olfactory information during the naturalistic behavior of plume tracking then promotes adaptive motor behaviors to actively sense odor information, and implementation of efficient behavioral strategies to locate odor sources. The rodent olfactory system then serves as an excellent model to study how sensation guides motion and vice-versa in the mammalian brain. Current technologies available for chemical quantification are not feasible to correlate real-time odor inputs with behavior in freely moving animals. Hence, we first developed a method to record real-time olfactory information using low-cost sensors that can be mounted on a mouse’s head. This method then allows unprecedented level of analysis in studying how odor contacts guide behavior in plume-tracking mice. Here I propose experiments to combine this method with behavioral tracking to understand active sensing of odor information, and behavioral strategies employed during plume-tracking in mice engaged in odor-source localization task. These behavioral studies will lay the foundation for the study of the neural bases of sensorimotor integration during the naturalistic behavior of plume-tracking. Defining the neurophysiological bases of odor-guided navigation will be instrumental for understanding how human brains integrate sensation and motion, and treatment of disorders that alter this integration in disorders, such as schizophrenia and post- traumatic stress disorder.