Temporal sequence geometry enables odor recognition and generalization.

ABSTRACT: Animals encode sensory stimuli with precisely timed neural activity across modalities. For example, mice can rapidly recognize odors, independent of their concentration, using information relayed from their olfactory bulbs by complex spatiotemporal patterns of mitral and tufted cell (MTC) activity. Yet, it remains unknown how MTC activity patterns are structured, and what role precisely timed activity sequences play in guiding perception. Here we investigated the geometry of MTC odor tuning and the structure of odor response sequences by performing fast 2-photon calcium imaging of hundreds of MTCs with sub-sniff resolution. We constructed a space of MTC tuning using the pairwise correlations between MTC odor responses averaged over a sniff and discovered that odor specific sequential activ

SUBMITTER: Gill JV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12871752 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature