Cracking the Olfactory Code

项目概要（总体：破解嗅觉密码） 感觉驱动感知，感知为决策和行动提供信息。嗅觉是动物的主要感觉器官， 大多数动物与环境互动。然而，嗅觉仍然笼罩在神秘之中-我们不 知道哪些分子气味特征对嗅觉系统重要，哪些不重要， 这些特征被重新组合，在大脑中创造出整体的气味表征，或者这些气味表征是如何在大脑中产生的。 表征与感知有关。因此，我们缺乏对核心的经验性理解 在嗅觉处理的每个阶段发生的变化，最终导致感知， 行为此外，我们缺乏一个明确的理论框架，以了解如何刺激空间， 离散的和高维的产生连续的和低维的感知空间。因为 嗅觉系统是“浅”的，这意味着在两个突触内，关于完整气味物体的信息是 抽象和概括-理解这个特定的电路也将提供一般的洞察力， 对行为至关重要的结构相关的异体皮质脑区域（例如，小脑，海马），并进入 在整合不同信息源中起关键作用的皮层中心（例如，后额叶前皮质 顶叶皮层）。在这里，我们建议通过收集第一个系统范围的 神经和知觉反应的数据集，以一个大的，原则性的气味，并通过应用一个统一的 统计和理论方法来解释它。该项目将召集具有专门知识的研究小组 它跨越了神经生物学，并将利用分子遗传学，神经成像， 电生理学、光学和化学遗传学、人类心理物理学和机器学习， 嗅觉系统的水平（从外周感受器到皮层到感知和行为输出）。采取 总之，这些实验将建立一个参考数据集，揭示关键的转换执行 嗅觉系统，测试嗅觉的关键统一理论，并创建一个社区范围的资源， 提出新的理论和实验。这项工作也将对我们的一般 了解感觉信息在大脑中是如何组织的，以促进适应性行动。

Project Summary (Overall: Cracking the Olfactory Code) Sensation drives perception, which informs decisions and actions. Olfaction is the main sense used by most animals to interact with the environment. However, olfaction remains shrouded in mystery — we do not know which molecular odorant features matter to the olfactory system and which do not, how information about these features is recombined to create holistic odor representations within the brain, or how those representations relate to perception. As a consequence, we lack an empirical understanding of the core transformations taking place at each stage of olfactory processing, which ultimately lead to perception and behavior. In addition, we lack a clear theoretical framework for understanding how a stimulus space that is both discrete and high-dimensional yields a perceptual space that is continuous and low dimensional. Because the olfactory system is “shallow” — meaning that within two synapses information about complete odor objects is abstracted and generalized — understanding this specific circuit will also afford general insight both into architecturally-related allocortical brain regions critical to behavior (e.g., cerebellum, hippocampus), and into cortical centers that play a key role in integrating diverse sources of information (e.g., prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex). Here we propose to reveal the computational logic of olfaction by collecting the first system-wide dataset of neural and perceptual responses to a large, principled set of odorants, and by applying a unified statistical and theoretical approach to its interpretation. This project will convene research groups with expertise that spans neurobiology, and will leverage recent technical advances in molecular genetics, neural imaging, electrophysiology, opto- and chemogenetics, human psychophysics, and machine learning to interrogate all levels (from peripheral receptors to cortex to perceptual and behavioral output) of the olfactory system. Taken together, these experiments will establish a reference dataset that reveals the key transformations performed by the olfactory system, test a key unifying theory for olfaction, and create a community-wide resource that will prompt new theory and experiment. This work will also have wide-ranging implications for our general understanding of how sensory information is organized in the brain to facilitate adaptive action.