Olfactory Group

A major way by which animals learn about their environment is through their sense of smell. Odors provide critical information about an animal’s food source, potential mates, their offspring, as well as parameters to avoid such as predators. The labs that are part of the Olfactory Cohort seek to understand the basic circuit mechanisms that underlie how animals detect and discriminate odors, as well as how these mechanisms are impacted by higher order brain functions such as attention and reward. In addition, it is becoming increasingly clear that olfaction is severely impacted by many common neurological disorders, often before other brain functions are affected, and so a focus of our labs is to examine the mechanisms underlying these disorders. We use a range of approaches, including in vitro and in vivo electrophysiology, advanced imaging, computational and ultrastructural techniques, behavioral studies, as well as viral/genetic methods to trace circuitry and manipulate cell function.