Not all Mice are Bad: Olfactory Bulb Study on Neurological Diseases

Presenter: Kiyana N'Gouemo, Neuroscience, Global Public Health Scholars

---

---

---

For my practicum, I worked in Dr. Araneda's Lab. This Neuroscience research lab aims to understand how neuromodulators impact brain circuits' function and influence sensory processing via the olfactory system and how that can impact behavior. We do a lot of experiments with social vs. nonsocial odors to understand how the habituation of those odors can change over time with age and how that can impact neurological diseases overall. I analyzed many of these videos, tagging different social behaviors I found while also tagging the mice so we have a better understanding of how many times the mouse sniffed the other mouse and for how long to strengthen Deep Lab Cut configurations, which is a behavioral analysis tracking app. Along with another undergraduate, I created a light and dark box that is used within the behavioral team to establish baseline anxiety before performing any experiments. During my time in this lab, I learned about olfactory processes, how those processes could change over time in a mouse model, and how that can pertain to humans. Overall, the public health implication is how odor processes can change over time with age; thus, studying how odor processes change in mice can allow us to understand how they change in humans, which can impact how neurological diseases can develop.