PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Edmund Chong
AU  - Monica Moroni
AU  - Christopher Wilson
AU  - Shy Shoham
AU  - Stefano Panzeri
AU  - Dmitry Rinberg
TI  - Manipulating synthetic optogenetic odors reveals the coding logic of olfactory perception
AID  - 10.1101/841916
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 841916
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/16/841916.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/16/841916.full
AB  - How does neural activity generate perception? The spatial identities and temporal latencies of activated units correlate with external sensory features, but finding the principal activity subspace that is consequential for perception, remains challenging. We trained mice to recognize synthetic odors constructed from parametrically-defined patterns of optogenetic activation, then measured perceptual changes during extensive and controlled perturbations across spatio-temporal dimensions. We modelled recognition as the matching of patterns to learned templates, finding that perceptually-meaningful templates are sequences of spatially-identified units, ordered by latencies relative to each other (with minimal effects of sniff). Within templates, individual units contribute additively, with larger contributions from earlier-activated units. Our synthetic approach reveals the fundamental logic of the olfactory code, and provides a general framework for testing links between sensory activity and perception.