A mouse’s nose is teaching scientists how the brain rewires itself to learn and adapt. The brain’s ability to change—neuronal plasticity—is well studied in isolated cells, but researchers know little about how different forms of plasticity work together inside real neural circuits to produce stable behaviour or new learning. This project will track those changes in the mouse olfactory system, where the team will either disrupt the sensory environment (deprivation or enrichment) or train mice to discriminate odours. Using genetic tools and new optical and behavioural methods, they will watch how individual neurons in the olfactory bulb alter their activity and how those changes ripple through the network. The work is fundamental science: it aims to uncover the basic principles by which a defined brain circuit adapts to environmental shifts. Understanding these principles could eventually inform therapies for conditions where plasticity goes wrong, such as recovery from stroke or sensory processing disorders, but the immediate goal is to map how the brain learns and stays stable at the same time.
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Neurons can modify themselves in response to environmental changes in a process called neuronal plasticity, which is thought to be the basis of adaptation and associative learning. The different cellular mechanisms of adaptive and associative neuronal plasticity have been extensively studied, but largely in isolation. Little is known about how they combine within individual cell types and neural circuits to influence neuronal activity and, ultimately, behavioural stability as well as learning. Using a multidisciplinary approach and focusing on the mouse olfactory system, we will investigate how sensory-induced plastic changes are employed to generate appropriate neuronal outputs at the cellular, circuit and behavioural level. We will perturb the olfactory landscape to trigger adaptive responses (sensory deprivation or enrichment), or associative olfactory learning (discrimination of different odours or odour concentrations). We will take advantage of the mouse genetic toolbox and newly-developed optical and behavioural methods to investigate how olfactory bulb neurons change, and how plasticity at the cellular level impacts overall network computation. By integrating these approaches, we will provide a multi-level synthesis of how a defined circuit responds to environmental changes. This will enhance our understanding of the fundamental principles of how the brain controls behaviour for both adaptation and learning.
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