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.
Using fast two-photon imaging of jGCaMP8f in mitral and tufted cells, we found that odor evoked activity sequences were structured like waves traveling across neurons positioned in an ‘odor-tuning space’.
Using a novel all-optical approach in awake mice, we found that the olfactory bulb acts as a rapid temporal filter. It opens a brief window for early signals before inhibition kicks in, which creates a concentration-invariant representation and decorrelates the patterns from different odors.
Dima Rinberg
We are excited to share that this work has now been published in Nature Neuroscience. The study was co-supervised by @shyshoham.bsky.social and involved a fantastic team of postdocs: Mursel Karadas, @jonvgill.bsky.social and Sebastian Ceballo.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We then modeled how these temporal sequences can train downstream cortex to generalize to new odors via unsupervised learning.
Relevant if you study neural manifolds, sensory invariance, temporal codes, or biologically inspired ML.
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...
Can we predict what a molecule smells like from its structure? A new exchange in @ChemSenses debates this question. 🧪 @kingfunk.bsky.social
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.
Dima Rinberg
Happy to share the latest from the lab! A microbiome-generated metabolite affects male-male aggression and social dominance in mice via the main olfactory system. Gut-Nose-Behavior.
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Dima Rinberg
Excited to see our paper describing a stereotyped receptor map for smell (led by @davidhbrann.bsky.social ) out in the world! See below for short thread with open access link to paper
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/s...
