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Olfactory Brain Network

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Olfactory Brain Network

After graduating from Florida State University, I worked as a lab manager in the Cognitive Affective Neuroscience Laboratory (CANLab) directed by Dr. Wen Li. The lab explores how sensory experiences shape our emotion processing, with a focus on the sense of smell in relation to anxiety and PTSD.

While I supported numerous projects, my primary task was to characterize the network of brain regions that process smells. To better understand how odor processing regions communicate, I analyzed functional brain activity from over 800 participants. I observed how brain activity in different odor processing regions related to one another and used this information to construct a network illustrating how all odor processing regions were connected.

I analyzed the structure of the network and determined it was composed of 3 subnetworks (each serving a different function). After testing odor processing ability in 32 additional participants, I demonstrated that participants with tightly cluster subnetworks were better at smell processing.

This work offers a template for the functional neuroanatomy of smell processing in humans and provides insights into how the network structure influences our ability to process smells. The related research paper has been accepted for publication at eNeuroand is currently available as an early release here.

You can also access the original BioRxiv preprint here.


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