Function and mechanisms of adaptation in the olfactory sensory pathway
What does an odor tell the animal about the world? Certainly, that a smelly object exists around it - maybe the finest food or an available mate. But can that smell tell something about the location of that object in space? And what does the brain do to extract and use that information? Our lab is interested in how animals gather information about the changing world from olfactory cues. Neural systems are endorsed with a multitude of adaptive mechanisms that have the function to optimize the encoding of relevant information essential to perform specific tasks. We seek the molecular and circuit mechanisms mediating adaptation in the olfactory sensory pathway and the functional role that these mechanisms play in specific behavioral contexts.
Neural circuits mediating adaptive and flexible behavior
Odors are not associated through a unique map to behavior. Rather, they are cues of the environment around the animal, and the behavior they drive depends on specific contextual aspects and knowledge accumulated through past experiences. As such, odors do not carry necessarily an intrinsic meaning. Rather this meaning is continuously updated. Is the meaning of a smell stable in time? On what timescales can this meaning be updated? And which neurons mediates this update? We are studying the adaptive response of the two main areas in the fly brain that mediate olfactory behavior: the lateral horn and the mushroom body.
