# Inhibitory processing and social learning in the accessory olfactory bulb

> **NIH NIH R01** · UT SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL CENTER · 2020 · $210,915

## Abstract

Two major goals of neuroscience research are (1) to understand how sensory information guides behavior and
(2) to understand how behaviors are modified by experience. In most sensory modalities, extracting salient
information involves passing signals back-and-forth between multiple, highly-interconnected neural circuits,
making it challenging to disentangle which computations are made by which neuronal populations. For this
reason, there is a significant advantage to studying sensory processing in neural pathways that involve few
interconnected circuits. In mice, a specialized chemosensory pathway called the accessory olfactory system
strongly influences social behavior and utilizes just one small neural circuit for the majority of its information
processing. This small neural circuit is called the accessory olfactory bulb (AOB), and the proposed research
aims to determine how neurons in the AOB extract behaviorally-relevant chemosensory information from the
environment and refine that information through experience. Information processing in the AOB critically
depends on the function of several classes of inhibitory interneurons, and neural plasticity in AOB interneurons
is thought to underlie forms of social learning. The proposed research will use electrophysiology, neuronal
calcium imaging, and optogenetics to determine the specific sensory computations performed by three major
classes of AOB interneurons. The proposal leverages a unique ex vivo preparation of the AOB that allows
researchers to monitor and manipulate AOB neurons during naturalistic peripheral chemosensory stimulation,
which is important for relating activity measurements to information content. Furthermore, the proposed
experiments will determine how the computations made by these interneurons contribute to the expression of
social behaviors. The final proposed experiments will investigate how experience-dependent plasticity in one of
the AOB interneuron classes impacts forms of social learning. Overall, the proposed research will produce
important insights into the neural mechanisms of sensory processing, social behaviors, and behavioral
plasticity.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9816622
- **Project number:** 5R01DC015784-04
- **Recipient organization:** UT SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** Julian P Meeks
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $210,915
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-12-01 → 2020-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9816622

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9816622, Inhibitory processing and social learning in the accessory olfactory bulb (5R01DC015784-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9816622. Licensed CC0.

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