Kaboom! The first time most of us hear the sound of an explosion is in the movies. Encountering the sound in the real world—even at a distance—has a profoundly different effect. Why? It's all about context. How we react to sounds and other sensory stimuli depends on how they're presented. We often don't know how we'll respond to something until we experience it. And the sensation is sometimes quite different from what we expected. So, the brain has to adjust quickly.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Florin Albeanu explains: "In nature, animals are faced with different rules of engagement. Sometimes, the same stimuli mean different things depending on context. Therefore, it's not so unusual that you have to act on these different rules and assess what action you have to take. What are the associations that the stimulus has with certain outcomes?"
New research from Albeanu and postdoc Diego Hernandez Trejo helps explain how this works. Their findings point to never-before-seen fast-updating signals in a feedback loop between the brain's olfactory cortex and olfactory bulb . These signals may help put odors and sounds into new contexts. The feedback loop may enable an animal's brain to immediately adapt to changes and help the animal fine-tune its motor responses accordingly.