NIH R01 · 2025
The Functional Role and Neural Basis of Rapid Turns in Olfactory Search Behavior
Summary When searching their environment for food, animals often switch from making random changes in direction to reflexively orient upstream when they smell an attractive odor, followed by rhythmic turns when they lose the plume. Random changes in direction are traditionally interpreted as manifestation of a stochastic search process. In this proposal, we test new hypothesis for the role of these random turns: animals turn deliberately to gather information before and after they change direction—allowing them to compute important internal and external state parameters such as wind direction, wind speed, ground speed, and altitude that they cannot directly measure. This idea is…
From the public funding record at NIH RePORTER. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.