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Updated: May 12, 2026
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Published on: May 6, 2010
Adult-neurogenesis allows for representational stability and flexibility in early olfactory system
Zhen Chen1, Krishnan Padmanabhan2
1Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, United States.
Elife
|May 11, 2026
Summary
Adult neurogenesis in the olfactory system (OS) enables stable odor representations and learning. This continuous brain cell generation balances representational stability with network plasticity for adaptation.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Olfactory System Research
- Computational Neuroscience
Background:
- Adult neurogenesis continuously reorganizes synaptic connections in the olfactory system.
- This ongoing circuit instability presents a challenge for maintaining stable odor representations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the dual roles of adult neurogenesis in olfactory system stability and plasticity.
- To understand how the olfactory system maintains odor representations amidst circuit reorganization.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a detailed spiking network model of early olfactory circuits.
- Analyzed neural codes and population dynamics in the olfactory bulb and piriform cortex (PCx).
Main Results:
- Adult neurogenesis preserves population-level odor representations in the olfactory bulb but causes representational drift in the PCx.
- Experience-dependent plasticity, particularly spike-timing-dependent plasticity, stabilizes PCx representations in stable odor environments.
- Adult neurogenesis allows cortical representations to adapt to changing olfactory environments.
Conclusions:
- Adult neurogenesis acts as a shared mechanism for both representational stability and plasticity (learning) in the olfactory system.
- This process may underpin complex computations in the mammalian olfactory bulb.
- Findings challenge the view of stability and plasticity as contradictory processes in neuronal coding.
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