Long-term olfactory enrichment promotes non-olfactory cognition, noradrenergic plasticity and remodeling of brain functional connectivity in older mice.

Brain functional and structural changes lead to cognitive decline during aging, but a high level of cognitive stimulation during life can improve cognitive performances in the older adults, forming the cognitive reserve. Noradrenaline has been proposed as a molecular link between environmental stimulation and constitution of the cognitive reserve. Taking advantage of the ability of olfactory stimulation to activate noradrenergic neurons of the locus coeruleus, we used repeated olfactory enrichment sessions over the mouse lifespan to enable the cognitive reserve buildup.

Lessons from behavioral lateralization in olfaction.

Sensory information, sampled by sensory organs positioned on each side of the body may play a crucial role in organizing brain lateralization. This question is of particular interest with regard to the growing evidence of alteration in lateralization in several psychiatric conditions. In this context, the olfactory system, an ancient, mostly ipsilateral and well-conserved system across phylogeny may prove an interesting model system to understand the behavioral significance of brain lateralization.

Short-term availability of adult-born neurons for memory encoding.

Adult olfactory neurogenesis provides waves of new neurons involved in memory encoding. However, how the olfactory bulb deals with neuronal renewal to ensure the persistence of pertinent memories and the flexibility to integrate new events remains unanswered. To address this issue, mice performed two successive olfactory discrimination learning tasks with varying times between tasks.

Non-imaged based method for matching brains in a common anatomical space for cellular imagery.

Background: Cellular imagery using histology sections is one of the most common techniques used in Neuroscience. However, this inescapable technique has severe limitations due to the need to delineate regions of interest on each brain, which is time consuming and variable across experimenters.

New Method: We developed algorithms based on a vectors field elastic registration allowing fast, automatic realignment of experimental brain sections and associated labeling in a brain atlas with high accuracy and in a streamlined way.