Presentation Details
| Time-course of odor coding in the human brain - a single-neuron perspective G.Naz Dikecligil1, Marcel S.Kehl2, Jay A.Gottfried1, Florian Mormann3. 1University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.2University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.3University of Bonn Medical Center, Bonn, Germany |
Abstract
Odor information arising from the olfactory bulb is projected in parallel to the piriform cortex, amygdala, entorhinal cortex, and other sub-regions of the primary olfactory cortex. These brain areas, which receive direct monosynaptic input from the olfactory bulb, are highly interconnected and functionally linked to higher-order regions, including the hippocampus. However, the precise latency and temporal evolution of odor coding within and across these regions in the human brain remain largely unexplored. To address this, we conducted rare single-neuron recordings in epilepsy patients undergoing invasive intracranial seizure monitoring with Behnke-Fried electrodes. We recorded neuronal activity from the piriform cortex, amygdala, entorhinal cortex, hippocampus, and parahippocampal cortex (1011 units across 15 sessions) during an odor identification task in which short, 200-ms odor pulses were delivered via a computer-controlled olfactometer. Odors were delivered using a closed-loop system at consistent phases of the inhalation cycle to ensure temporal precision. Preliminary results show that neurons in the piriform cortex exhibit the earliest and strongest odor responses and that a higher proportion of piriform neurons are modulated by odors compared to the other regions. At the population level, we observed both rapid and sustained odor coding in the human olfactory network lasting ~7 seconds after odor presentation. Together, these initial findings demonstrate rapid and precise processing of complex odors by neurons in human olfactory network, laying the foundation for exploring interregional transmission and temporal dynamics in the human brain.
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