Joint experience-dependent representations of odors and temporal context in the zebrafish homolog of piriform cortex

Authors

Caudullo, T. C., van Krugten, J., Eckhardt, J., Friedrich, R. W.

Abstract

Intelligent behavior requires experience-dependent internal representations of relevant information. We examined representational learning in telencephalic area pDp of adult zebrafish, the homolog of piriform cortex. Activity was measured by multiphoton imaging through a prism in head-fixed fish trained in an odor discrimination task. Population dynamics could be decomposed into independent modes, each consisting of distributed activity across mixed-selectivity neurons, that encoded odor identity, novelty, and the progression of time. Training sharpened novelty detection, strengthened odor-specific response components, and geometrically untangled representational manifolds. Experience-driven plasticity generalized across chemically related stimuli. Main observations could be reproduced phenomenologically by a model assuming linear interactions between novelty-, identity- and time-encoding activity modes. We conclude that pDp jointly represents olfactory and temporal information relevant for episodic memory. Experience enhances the accessibility and generalization of information, indicating that pDp supports brain-wide learning by geometrically organizing olfactory and time-related information on neural manifolds.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 29 Aug 2026.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this preprint? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.