Olfaction is an evolutionarily primitive sense critical for survival across the animal kingdom - finding food, searching for mates, or avoiding predation all depend on detecting, identifying, and discriminating odors. Although early steps in olfactory processing are relatively well understood, significant gaps remain in our understanding of higher-order odor representations and processing during on-going behavior. Deciphering the operating principles of olfaction requires the development of innovative and integrative approaches that combine novel theoretical frameworks, improved mathematical models, and novel behavioral paradigms across the phylogenetic spectrum, experimental methodologies, and engineering principles. The objectives of this 5-day workshop, a so-called "Ideas Lab", is to address this challenge by bringing together researchers from diverse scientific backgrounds to engender fresh thinking and innovative approaches that will transform understanding of olfactory processing in behavioral contexts while spawning new opportunities to elucidate the general nature of sensory representations in the brain. The participants will work collaboratively to develop and hone novel ideas about and approaches to investigate olfactory processing, and then use these ideas and approaches to develop multidisciplinary research projects that contain genuinely innovative and potentially transformative investigations on olfactory coding.
The organizers will make a strong effort to invite women, members of underrepresented groups, and investigators at all academic levels as workshop participants. Participants will include 10-15 quantitative researchers and 15-20 neuroscientists. An integral aspect of the workshop is extensive cross-disciplinary interaction, which will be facilitated by five leading scientists from key disciplines who have agreed to serve as mentors and will guide the project development process. Importantly, this workshop is part of a concerted effort to coordinate and align interagency priorities to accomplish the goals of the BRAIN Initiative. The workshop is anticipated to result in the development of highly innovative research proposals that integrate theoretical and computational approaches with neuroscience toward the goal of elucidating the nature of olfactory processing and sensory representations in the brain in general.
