Jay Gottfried

Arthur H. Rubenstein University Professor
A.B., Molecular Biology, Princeton University
M.D., New York University School of Medicine
Ph.D., Physiology and Neuroscience, New York University School of Medicine
Postdoc, Olfactory Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, University College London

 

Office Location: 
Stemmler Hall, Ground Floor, Room G13A, 418 Curie Blvd., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Email: 
jaygottf@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
Research Interests: 
Sensation and Perception
Cognitive Neuroscience
Behavioral Neuroscience
Learning and Memory

 

Specific Research Area:

Human olfactory neuroscience
Odor codes, circuits, oscillations, and percepts
 
Research Synopsis:
 
My research focuses on the neurobiology of the human sense of smell, an ideal model system for elucidating mechanisms of information processing within limbic circuits and networks affiliated with emotion, perception, learning, and memory. My work has traditionally used functional MRI (fMRI) techniques to explore the substrates of odor perception in the human brain, and more recently we have developed a complementary research platform using intracranial EEG recordings from epilepsy patients to obtain a finer physiological understanding of human olfaction with unrivalled temporal and spatial resolution. Our newest projects focus on the anatomy and physiology of the human olfactory epithelium and olfactory bulb , and we are beginning to develop behavioral paradigms in rodents as an "inverse translational" approach for gaining mechanistic insights about the human olfactory system, with potential links to neurodegenerative disorders affecting the sense of smell even prior to the onset of overt symptoms. 
 
 
Selected Publications: 

Li, W., Howard, J.D., Parrish, T., & Gottfried, J.A. (2008).  Aversive learning enhances perceptual and cortical discrimination of initially indiscriminable odor cues.  Science 319: 1842-1845.    

Howard, J.D., Plailly, J., Grueschow, M., Haynes, J.-D., & Gottfried, J.A.  (2009). Odor quality coding and categorization in human posterior piriform cortex. Nature Neuroscience 12: 932-938.    

Bowman, N.E., Kording, K.P., & Gottfried, J.A. (2012). Temporal integration of olfactory perceptual evidence in human orbitofrontal cortex. Neuron 75: 916-927.    

Hauner, K.K., Howard, J.D., Zelano, C., & Gottfried, J.A. (2013). Stimulus-specific enhancement of fear extinction during slow-wave sleep. Nature Neuroscience 16: 1553-1555.    

Howard, J.D., & Gottfried, J.A. (2014). Configural and elemental coding of natural odor mixture components in the human brain. Neuron 84: 857-869.    

Qu, L.P., Kahnt, T., Cole, S.M., & Gottfried, J.A. (2016). De novo emergence of odor category representations in the human brain. Journal of Neuroscience 36: 468-478. 

Bao, X, Raguet, L.L.G., Cole, S.M., Howard, J.D., & Gottfried, J.A. (2016). The role of piriform associative connections in odor categorization. eLife5. pii: e13732. doi: 10.7554/eLife.13732.    

Howard, J.D., Kahnt, T., & Gottfried, J.A. (2016).  Converging prefrontal pathways support associative and perceptual features of conditioned stimuli. Nature Communications 7: 11546. doi: 10.1038/ncomms11546.        

Jiang, H., Schuele, S., Rosenow, J., Zelano, C., Parvizi, J., Tao, J.X., Wu, S., & Gottfried, J.A. (2017). Theta Oscillations Rapidly Convey Odor-Specific Content in Human Piriform Cortex. Neuron 94: 207-219.

Shanahan LK, Gjorgieva E, Paller KA, Kahnt T, Gottfried JA. (2018). Odor-evoked category reactivation in human ventromedial prefrontal cortex during sleep promotes memory consolidation. Elife. 2018 Dec 18;7. pii: e39681. doi: 10.7554/eLife.39681.

Bao X, Gjorgieva E, Shanahan LK, Howard JD, Kahnt T, Gottfried JA. (2019). Grid-like Neural Representations Support Olfactory Navigation of a Two-Dimensional Odor Space. Neuron 102: 1066-1075.

Advisee:


Yao Zhao [Psychology Grad Student]