
How does the brain encode stimuli from the outside world to give rise to perceptions? What does a smell look like in the brain? The focus of my group is to understand how neural circuits compute sensory-motor transformations across different contexts, senses, and brain states to generate meaningful behaviors.
How does the brain encode stimuli from the outside world, within and across sensory modalities, to generate specific perceptions that trigger complex behaviors? How is the brain shaped by sensory experience, and what modifications occur in neuronal circuits that allow us to learn and remember? These are the questions guiding the work of Florin Albeanu, who is using the olfactory bulb and olfactory cortex of mice as the subject of his current studies. Airborne chemicals, translated into neuronal signals by specific receptors in the nose, are sent directly to the olfactory bulb. Advances in optical imaging and optogenetics combined with electrophysiological recordings enable Albeanu and colleagues to monitor and/or alter patterns of activity at unprecedented synaptic and millisecond resolution, in real time, as animals are engaged in various behaviors. For survival, rodents need to identify the smells of objects of interest such as food, mates, and predators, across their recurring appearances in the surroundings, despite apparent variations in their features. Furthermore, animals aptly extract relevant information about environment across different sensory modalities, combining olfactory, visual, or auditory cues. By recording neuronal activity in the input and output layers of the olfactory bulb, as well as feedback from olfactory cortical areas and neuromodulatory signals, Albeanu and his team aim to understand computations the bulb performs and how this information is decoded deeper in the brain. They have recently published evidence suggesting that the mouse olfactory bulb is not merely a relay station between the nose and cortex, as many have supposed. Using optogenetic tools and a novel patterned illumination technique, they discovered that there are many more information output channels leaving the olfactory bulb for the cortex than there are inputs received from the nose. They are currently investigating how this diversity of bulb outputs is generated, as well as how downstream areas, such as the piriform and parietal cortex, make use of such information during behaviors.
President’s essay: Bringing bold visions to life
May 26, 2023
CSHL President & CEO Bruce Stillman sees the Laboratory as a global hub for scientific expertise and a powerful launchpad for early-career scientists.
Follow your nose: Tracking the brain’s smell circuits
February 27, 2023
Take this 8-bit trip along the brain’s olfactory circuits to see what happens up there when you smell something.
Mapping the path from smell to perception
October 27, 2022
Smell remains the most mysterious of our five senses, but CSHL neuroscientists are now closer than ever to understanding it.
Sniffing out the brain’s smelling power
September 29, 2022
CSHL neuroscientists have discovered neurons in the brain, called tufted cells, are more powerful in recognizing odors than historically thought.
Building on 150 years of neuroanatomy
October 7, 2021
Learn more about how researchers reached a milestone in a years-long effort to catalog the cells of the human, mouse, and monkey brains.
Think a census of humans is hard? Try counting their brain cells!
October 6, 2021
CSHL researchers and other collaborators reached a milestone in a years-long effort to catalog the cells of the human, mouse, and monkey brains.
Singing mice will teach us about our own conversations
November 9, 2020
Assistant Professor Arkarup Banerjee joins the neuroscience faculty, focusing on how the mind processes information and produces behaviors.
There’s more to smell than meets the nose
July 22, 2019
Neuroscience researchers work to figure out our brains process smells, including what features are essential to identifying and separating odors.
Quantifying how the brain smells
July 22, 2019
Neuroscience researchers at CSHL are trying to figure out how the brain processes smells and what features of odors are important in that process.
Watson School alumni spotlights
May 19, 2019
This year, Watson School celebrates the 20th anniversary of its first entering class and looks back at some notable alumni from over the years.
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Selected Publications
A non-canonical feedforward pathway for computing odor identity
30 Sep 2020 | bioRxiv
Banerjee, Arkarup, Chae, Honggoo, Albeanu, D
Mosaic representations of odors in the input and output layers of the mouse olfactory bulb
Aug 2019 | Nature Neuroscience | 22(8):1306-1317.
Chae, H, Kepple, D, Bast, W, Murthy, V, Koulakov, A, Albeanu, D
Olfactory marker protein (OMP) regulates formation and refinement of the olfactory glomerular map
29 Nov 2018 | Nature Communications | 9(1):5073
Albeanu, D, Provost, A, Agarwal, P, Soucy, E, Zak, J, Murthy, V
Olfactory marker protein (OMP) regulates refinement of the olfactory glomerular map
May 2018 | bioRxiv
Albeanu, Dinu, Provost, Allison, Agarwal, Prateek, Soucy, Edward, Murthy, Venkatesh
All Publications
Cortex-wide response mode of VIP-expressing inhibitory neurons by reward and punishment
23 Nov 2022 | eLife | 11:e78815
Szadai, Zoltán, Pi, Hyun-Jae, Chevy, Quentin, Ócsai, Katalin, Albeanu, Dinu, Chiovini, Balázs, Szalay, Gergely, Katona, Gergely, Kepecs, Adam, Rózsa, Balázs
High-throughput sequencing of single neuron projections reveals spatial organization in the olfactory cortex
27 Oct 2022 | Cell | 185(22):4117-4134.e28
Chen, Yushu, Chen, Xiaoyin, Baserdem, Batuhan, Zhan, Huiqing, Li, Yan, Davis, Martin, Kebschull, Justus, Zador, Anthony, Koulakov, Alexei, Albeanu, Dinu
Long-range functional loops in the mouse olfactory system and their roles in computing odor identity
26 Sep 2022 | Neuron | :S0896-6273(22)00810
Chae, Honggoo, Banerjee, Arkarup, Dussauze, Marie, Albeanu, Dinu
Mapping odorant receptors to their glomeruli
21 Mar 2022 | Nature Neuroscience
Bast, Walter, Albeanu, Dinu
Wiring logic of the early rodent olfactory system revealed by high-throughput sequencing of single neuron projections
2021 | bioRxiv
Chen, Yushu, Chen, Xiaoyin, Baserdem, Batuhan, Zhan, Huiqing, Li, Yan, Davis, Martin, Kebschull, Justus, Zador, Anthony, Koulakov, Alexei, Albeanu, Dinu
Long-range interactions between short axon cells and external tufted cells gate glomerular output in the mouse olfactory bulb.
1 Jul 2017 | Neuron | 87(1):193-207
Banerjee, Arkarup, Marbach, F, Anselmi, Francesca, Koh, Matthew, Davis, Martin, Garcia da Silva, P, Delevich, K, Oyibo, Hassana, Gupta, Priyanka, Li, Bo, Albeanu, Dinu