Can we predict what a molecule smells like from its structure? A new exchange in @ChemSenses debates this question. 🧪 @kingfunk.bsky.social

When it comes to sensory processing, cortex should not get all the credit... In olfaction, a key challenge is identifying odors regardless of concentration. Our new paper in @natneuro.nature.com shows how the olfactory bulb performs this crucial computation before signals even reach the cortex.

New preprint from our group (collaboration with @sueyeonchung.bsky.social) showing that discriminating odor components within a complex mixture is constrained by neural sensitivity rather than background interference - likely due to sparse representations at the front end.

How do past sensory experiences prepare us for new ones? Our new paper tackles this long-standing question, revealing a role for activity sequences in the olfactory bulb. Excited to share our work led by @jonvgill.bsky.social with Mursel Karadas & Shy Shoham www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨 Preprint alert! 🚨 Can mice estimate the distance to an odour source? New work led by Cristina Marin and colleagues, jointly supervised by @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social at the @crick.ac.uk and myself. Spoiler alert: Yes, they can! Read the paper here: bit.ly/43A9tF9 Short 🧵 below

Linking function and structure at scale with X-rays - and several times over. Massive congratulations to the team ‪@yuxinzhang.bsky.social‬, @carlesbosch.bsky.social, @apacureanu.bsky.social @esrf.fr, @crick.ac.uk and all our collaborators.

Due to a coincidence of timing, several PIs at NIMH had a term appointment that ended in Feb. But renewals were blocked. Several members of the NIMH external review board, led by chair @jmgrohneuro.bsky.social, wrote a letter to the Senate. It's worth a read. 2/

New preprint: a simple method (ADePT) for optical control and recording of activity by axially-decoupling the focal planes for widefield patterned photo-stimulation and two photon imaging. Proof-of-principle analysis of functional connectivity in the olfactory bulb. 1/7 #neuroscience

Here it is finally: Our mathematical methods book for life scientists! Aimed at advanced undergrads and beginning grad students, plus all those who want a deeper look at the math behind quantitative biology. @portugueslab.bsky.social. 1/3

Yes, many worrying things happening in science that should take priority in grabbing our attention - but we are worried precisely because scientific knowledge is worth creating. In that spirit, I am proud to highlight our latest @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint! #neuroscience 🧪

From logical gates to grandmother cells, neuroscientists have employed many metaphors to explain single neuron function. Dmitri Chklovskii makes the case that neurons are actually trying to control how their outputs affect the rest of the brain. By Paul Middlebrooks bit.ly/4hPYk7w #neuroskyence

New paper from the lab: feedback from piriform cortex to the olfactory bulb carries identity and reward contingency signals in a multimodal (odor and sound) rule-reversal task. Feedback is re-formatted within seconds and reflects changes in the perceived rules of engagement. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Our perspective on designing electronic noses inspired by natural olfaction! #neuroscience #ChemSky 🧪

my talk about deep learning in olfaction at NAISys 2024 is posted on yoitube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRo5...

Our DeepNose paper is in arxiv. In it, we present an equivariant CNN which can predict human olfactory perception based on molecular shapes, including mixtures. Comments/suggestions are very welcome. arxiv.org/abs/2412.08747

Glad to share this theory paper on learning to align neural representations with sparse connectivity. Work led by graduate student @leo-bo-liu.bsky.social, in a wonderful collaboration with Yuhai Tu from IBM Research and @shanq.bsky.social from Flatiron Institute. #neuroscience 🧪

I am here