Odor representations from the two nostrils are temporally segregated in human piriform cortex

• DOI: 10.1101/2023.02.14.528521
• Publication Date: 2023-02-15T02:40:16Z
• Authors: Gülce Nazlı Dikec...; Andrew I. Yang; Nisha Sanghani; Timothy Lucas; H. Isaac Chen; Kathryn A. Davis; Jay A. Gottfried
• Keywords: Nostril; Piriform cortex

The human olfactory system has two discrete channels of sensory input, arising from epithelia housed in the left and right nostrils. Here, we asked whether primary cortex (piriform cortex, PC) encodes odor information nostrils as integrated or distinct stimuli. We recorded intracranial EEG signals directly PC while subjects participated an identification task where odors were delivered to left, right, both analyzed time-course odor-identity coding using machine learning approaches, found that uni-nostril inputs ipsilateral nostril are encoded ~480 ms faster than contralateral on average. During naturalistic bi-nostril sampling, emerged temporally segregated epochs with first epoch corresponding second representations. These findings reveal maintains representations input each through temporal segregation, highlighting scheme at cortical level can parse across within course a single inhalation.