Biology subjects

Yu, C. R.

Publications and source records attributed to Yu, C. R..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Acquisition of Innate Odor Preference Depends on Spontaneous and Experiential Activities During Critical Period

Animals possess inborn ability to recognize certain odors, which enables them to seek food, avoid predators and find mates even in the absence of prior experiences. The establishment of innate odor preference has been thought to be genetically hardwired. Here we report that the acquisition of innate odor recognition requires spontaneous neural activity and is influenced by sensory experience during early postnatal development. Genetic silencing of mouse olfactory sensory neurons during the developmental critical period has little impact on odor sensitivity, odor discrimination and recognition later in life. However, it abolishes innate odor preference and alters the patterns of activation in brain centers. Moreover, exposure to an innately aversive odor during the critical period abolishes aversion in adulthood in an odor specific manner. The loss of innate aversion is associated with broadened projection of OSNs expressing the cognate receptor such that they innervate ectopic glomeruli in the olfactory bulb. These results indicate that a delicate balance of neural activity is required during critical period in establishing innate odor preference and that ectopic projection is a convergent mechanism to alter innate odor valence.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Encoding Innately Recognized Odors via a Generalized Population Code

Odors carrying intrinsic values often trigger instinctive aversive or attractive responses. It is not known how innate valence is encoded. An intuitive model suggests that the information is conveyed through specific channels in hardwired circuits along the olfactory pathway, insulated from influences of other odors, to trigger innate responses. Here we show that in mice, mixing innately aversive or attractive odors with a neutral odor, and surprisingly, mixing two odors with the same valence, abolish the innate behavioral responses. Recordings from the olfactory bulb indicate that odors are not masked at the level of peripheral activation and glomeruli independently encode components in the mixture. In contrast, crosstalk among the mitral/tufted cells changes their patterns of activity such that those elicited by the mixtures can no longer be linearly decoded as separate components. The changes in behavioral and mitral/tufted cell responses are associated with reduced activation of brain areas linked to odor preferences. Thus, crosstalk among odor channels at the earliest processing stage in the olfactory pathway leads to re-coding of odor identity to abolish valence associated with the odors. These results are inconsistent with insulated labeled lines and support a model of a common mechanism of odor recognition for both innate and learned valence associations.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

A Dependency Capturing Code for Robust Object Representation

Sensory inputs conveying information about the environment are often noisy and incomplete, yet the brain can achieve remarkable consistency in object recognition. This cognitive robustness is thought to be enabled by transforming the varying input patterns into invariant representations of objects, but how this transformation occurs computationally remains unclear. Here we propose that sensory coding should follow a principle of maximal dependence capturing to encode associations among structural components that can uniquely identify objects. We show that a computational framework incorporating dimension expansion and a specific form of sparse coding can capture structures that contain maximum information about specific objects, allow redundancy coding, and enable consistent representation of object identities. Using symbol and face recognition, we demonstrate that a two-layer system can generate representations that remain invariant under conditions of occlusion, corruption, or high noise.

neuroscience↗