Olfactory perceptual stability and discrimination

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Abstract
No two roses smell exactly alike, but our brain accurately bundles these variations into a single percept 'rose'. The authors now report that although olfactory bulb neurons decorrelate odor mixtures that are quite similar, piriform cortex neuronal responses show pattern completion and predict olfactory perception. No two roses smell exactly alike, but our brain accurately bundles these variations into a single percept 'rose'. We found that ensembles of rat olfactory bulb neurons decorrelate complex mixtures that vary by as little as a single missing component, whereas olfactory (piriform) cortical neural ensembles perform pattern completion in response to an absent component, essentially filling in the missing information and allowing perceptual stability. This piriform cortical ensemble activity predicts olfactory perception.