The general framework of this work is to understand how experience modulates olfactory processing. In particular, we study the plasticity of olfactory cortex representations of odors associated with a specific aspect of sensory experience: the spatial context in which odors are presented. Using an olfactory-visual context associative task, we recently found that odor representations in the piriform cortex (PCx), the largest region of the olfactory cortex, also encode spatial context information. A candidate source of these contextual inputs to the PCx is the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC), a region widely involved in context encoding and memory processing, which is monosynaptically connected to the PCx.
To investigate the role of the LEC-PCx pathway, we use a dual-virus approach to selectively inhibit LEC-to-PC projections in vivo. Specifically, we combine a retrograde virus (retroAAV-DIO-HM4Di-Cherry) with an anterograde virus (AAV-CamKII-GFP-Cre) to express the inhibitory DREADD receptor HM4Di in LEC neurons projecting to the PCx. Preliminary results show that dual injections successfully label neurons co-expressing both red and green fluorescent proteins in the LEC. Future experiments will assess how this manipulation affects PCx activity and the behavior of animals trained in the associative task.