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方式，已被证明可以指导动物的导航和决策。 王国内不同的门类。然而，使用嗅觉作为感官提示来引导导航是一件复杂的事情 有问题。这是因为气味分子在长距离的传播是由混沌和 流体从源头到搜索者的湍急流动。因此，动物接收到的嗅觉信息 在不同的空间尺度上动态变化。尽管有这种复杂的感官信号，啮齿类动物 在远距离定位空气中的气味来源方面非常出色。随机嗅觉信息 在羽毛跟踪的自然主义行为中，然后促进适应性运动行为，以主动感觉气味 信息，并实施有效的行为策略来定位气味来源。啮齿动物的嗅觉 然后系统作为一个很好的模型来研究感觉如何引导运动，反之亦然。 哺乳动物的大脑。 目前可用于化学定量的技术不能用于关联实时气味 在自由活动的动物中输入行为。因此，我们首先开发了一种实时记录嗅觉的方法 使用可以安装在老鼠头上的低成本传感器来获取信息。然后，此方法允许 在研究气味接触如何引导羽流跟踪小鼠的行为方面，分析达到了前所未有的水平。在这里，我 提出将该方法与行为跟踪相结合的实验，以了解气味的主动感知 在气味来源小鼠的羽毛追踪过程中使用的信息和行为策略 本地化任务。这些行为学研究将为研究大鼠的神经基础奠定基础。 羽流跟踪自然主义行为中的感觉运动整合。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，以及改变障碍中这种整合的障碍的治疗，如精神分裂症和后遗症- 创伤性应激障碍。

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.