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Updated: Nov 2, 2025

A Lateralized Odor Learning Model in Neonatal Rats for Dissecting Neural Circuitry Underpinning Memory Formation
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Representational drift in primary olfactory cortex.

Carl E Schoonover1, Sarah N Ohashi2,3, Richard Axel4

  • 1Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. ces2001@columbia.edu.

Nature
|June 10, 2021
PubMed
Summary

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This summary is machine-generated.

Olfactory cortex responses to odors are unstable, drifting significantly over weeks. This instability in piriform cortex challenges its role in stable odor perception and may be common in other brain regions.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Olfactory System Research
  • Sensory Perception

Background:

  • Perceptual constancy relies on stable brain representations of sensory input.
  • The piriform cortex (olfactory cortex) is believed to encode odor identity.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the stability of odor-evoked neural responses in the mouse piriform cortex over extended periods.
  • To determine if fear conditioning or repeated odor exposure can stabilize these responses.

Main Methods:

  • Electrophysiological recordings of single units in the mouse piriform cortex over several weeks.
  • Utilizing a linear classifier to assess odor discrimination performance over time.
  • Implementing fear conditioning and daily odor exposure paradigms.

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Last Updated: Nov 2, 2025

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Main Results:

  • Odor-evoked responses in the piriform cortex exhibited significant drift over days to weeks.
  • A classifier trained on initial responses lost accuracy, nearing chance levels after 32 days.
  • Neither fear conditioning nor daily odor exposure prevented response drift.

Conclusions:

  • The piriform cortex shows continuous drift in odor-evoked responses, questioning its role in stable odor perception.
  • This neural instability may be a characteristic of the piriform cortex's unstructured connectivity.
  • Such instability could be a property shared by other unstructured cortical areas.