Spatiotemporal Coding in the Human Olfactory System

描述(由申请人提供)：越来越清楚的是，嗅觉在各种各样的神经和神经精神障碍中受到损害。然而，临床上对人类嗅觉的日益增长的欣赏被对其解剖学和生理学的基本了解所抵消。即使是最基本的假设也没有得到探索：人类的嗅觉通路真的是同侧的吗？初级嗅觉皮质到底在哪里？气味信息通过人类嗅觉大脑传输的速度有多快？这一探索性研究项目的主要目的是研究药物难治性癫痫患者直接从人脑表面的气味诱发脑电(EEG)活动的模式，并用皮质电刺激和皮质诱发电位定位嗅皮层。在标准的手术探查中，高密度侵入性电极阵列在颞叶和眶前皮质周围的高精度放置为了解嗅觉系统的功能解剖提供了一个独特的窗口，而嗅觉系统的功能解剖在很大程度上尚未被探索。本文提出的工作将对人类嗅觉有一个更全面的基础了解，有助于癫痫患者的诊断和功能结局的预测，并为监测其他涉及嗅觉的神经疾病的发病和进展开辟新的途径。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): It is increasingly clear that olfactory perception is impaired in a wide variety of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. However, this growing clinical appreciation for the human sense of smell is offset by a poor basic understanding of its anatomy and physiology. Even the most fundamental assumptions remain unexplored: Is the human olfactory pathway really ipsilateral? Where exactly is primary olfactory cortex? How fast is odor information transmitted through the human olfactory brain? The major aim of this exploratory research project is to investigate odor-evoked patterns of electroencephalographic (EEG) activity directly from the surface of the human brain in patients with medically intractable epilepsy and to map the olfactory cortex with electrical cortical stimulation and cortico-cortical evoked potentials. The highly accurate placement of a high-density invasive electrode array around the temporal and orbitofrontal cortices during standard surgical exploration offers a unique window into the functional anatomy of the olfactory system which has been largely unexplored. Work proposed here will yield a more comprehensive basic understanding of human olfaction, help in diagnosis and prediction of functional outcome in epilepsy patients, and open up new avenues for monitoring disease onset and progression in other neurological disorders involving the sense of smell.