2014217 NeuroNex: From Odor to Action - Discovering Principles of Olfactory-Guided Natural Behavior

该项目解决了神经科学的一个中心问题：动物如何使用来自环境刺激的信息来引导自然神经元？有几个因素支持我们通过关注嗅觉系统来解决这个问题的计划。嗅觉是一种进化上古老的感觉。动物从环境中收集气味，以告知生存关键行为，如寻找食物和配偶，或避免捕食者和毒素。这些自然的行为可以在实验室环境中很大程度上被复制，使用的刺激是自然的成分和动力学。哺乳动物和昆虫的嗅觉系统在其中枢神经系统的连续处理水平上独立地进化出共同的结构元件。嗅觉系统共享这些结构元素可能是由于趋同进化到一套类似的解决方案，共同的嗅觉问题。这种趋同性表明，我们提出的比较方法将导致发现的基本原则和限制，不能通过研究单一物种，这突出了计划的理论工作的重要性。因为这个项目是跨学科的，比较的，和理论驱动的，它将需要一个整合良好的团队，协同工作，以解决重叠的问题。我们将协调我们的努力，以实现来自不同背景，专业知识和兴趣的团队成员之间的融合和协同作用，这是这项工作变革潜力的关键。

This project addresses a central question of neuroscience: How do animals use information from stimuli in their environment to guide natural behav- iors? Several factors support our plan to address this question by focusing on the olfactory system. Olfaction is an evolutionarily ancient sense. Animals gather odors from their environments to inform survival-critical behaviors such as finding food and mates, or avoiding predators and toxins. These natural behaviors can be largely replicated in lab settings, using stimuli that are natural in composition, and dynamics. Olfactory systems of mammals and insects have independently evolved common structural elements at successive levels of processing in their central nervous systems. Olfactory systems share these structural elements likely due to convergent evolution towards a set of similar solutions to shared olfactory problems. This convergence suggests that the comparative approach that we propose will lead to the discovery of fundamental principles and constraints that could not be discovered by study of a single species-which highlights the importance of the planned theoretical work. Because this project is interdisciplinary, comparative, and theory-driven, it will require a well-integrated team, working synergistically to address overlapping questions. We will coordinate our efforts to achieve convergence and synergy between team members from diverse backgrounds, expertise, and interests, that are key to the transformative potential of this work.