NRSA Fellowship in Support of Modeling the Neuronal Processing in the Olfactory Bulb

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): How does the brain encode sensory information using action potentials? Is only the mean firing rate relevant or is the precise timing of the spikes significant? Since near-synchrony of spikes is effective in driving downstream neurons, it could be an important feature of the neural code. Possibly, the brain makes use of both types of encoding, emphasizing one or the other, depending on the task at hand. In recent experiments on the olfactory bulb in zebrafish, complex temporal behavior involving near-synchrony and oscillations has been observed that suggests a multiplexing of the information transmission, with near-synchronous and asynchronous spikes carrying different information about the sensory input. In the proposed project, a biophysically detailed computational model of the circuitry of the olfactory bulb will be developed in close collaboration with experiments, in order to uncover the mechanisms underlying the multiplexing and the near-synchronization of neural sub-populations. The results may also shed light on other brain functions where temporal correlations and oscillations appear to be relevant (e.g., attention, perception, sleep, memory consolidation/retrieval).