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PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Perception Science
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1423694

One respiratory cycle as a minimum time unit for making behavioral decisions in the mammalian olfactory system

Provisionally accepted
Kensaku Mori Kensaku Mori 1,2*Hitoshi Sakano Hitoshi Sakano 3*
  • 1 RIKEN, Saitama, Japan
  • 2 RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS), Wako, Saitama, Japan
  • 3 Department of Brain Function, School of Medical Sciences, University of Fukui, Matsuoka, Fukui, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Voluntary behaviors such as sniffing, moving, and eating require decision-making accompanied by intentional respiration. Based on the study of respirationcoherent activity of rodent olfactory networks, we infer that during the inhalation phase of respiration, olfactory cortical areas process environmental odor information and transmit it to the higher multisensory cognitive areas via feedforward pathways to comprehensively evaluate the surrounding situation.We also infer that during the exhalation phase, the higher multisensory areas generate cognitive-signals and transmit them not only to the behavioral output system but also back to the olfactory cortical areas. We presume that the cortical mechanism couples the intentional respiration with the voluntary behaviors. Thus, in one respiratory cycle, the mammalian brain may transmit and process sensory information to cognize and evaluate the multisensory image of the external world, leading to one behavioral decision and one emotional expression. In this perspective article, we propose that one respiratory cycle provides a minimum time unit for decision making during wakefulness.

    Keywords: sensory inputs, olfactory system, Behavioral decisions, Voluntary behaviors, inhalation and exhalation, one respiratory cycle -one decision making

    Received: 26 Apr 2024; Accepted: 26 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Mori and Sakano. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Kensaku Mori, RIKEN, Saitama, Japan
    Hitoshi Sakano, Department of Brain Function, School of Medical Sciences, University of Fukui, Matsuoka, Fukui, Japan

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.