Johan Lundstrom

Our latest paper in PLoS Biology was a great project. We show that the human olfactory system seems to code mainly odor perception (rated intensity), not physical properties (concentration). Fantastic work by @nordenneuro.bsky.social, @artinarshamian.bsky.social, Irene Zanettin, and Mikael Lundkvist

How can some smells seem stronger than others despite equivalent odor concentrations? @nordenneuro.bsky.social &co show that coordinated neural activity between #OlfactoryBulb & #PiriformCortex tracks how intensely an odor is perceived (rather than concentration) @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4fQxXR5

“For 30 years, we’ve taught students that the mouse olfactory epithelium is divided into a handful of broad zones, within which receptor choice is essentially random,” @odorjohan.bsky.social told me. Now we know it's not random. My latest for @nature.com 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

We are advertising for a postdoc with skills in psychophysiological measurement for a project on smell and emotions. Closing date is 30th October. Please spread the word. www.stir.ac.uk/about/work-a...

🍲🍲 NEW PAPER 🍰🍰 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Food choices are always a tradeoff between the benefits of energy intake and the risk of accidental contamination. The relative importance of these two varies depending on a person's current metabolic need. (1/3)

Methodological determinants of signal quality in electrobulbogram recordings https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.01.662502v1

‼️🚨 postdoc position 🚨‼️ I am looking for a postdoc in psychoneuroimmunology - come join our group to work on sickness behavior in humans 🤒🦠 at Karolinska Institutet @ki.se !! ki.varbi.com/en/what:job/... deadline July 31st @pnirs.bsky.social #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky #interoception

If you are in neuroscience and interested in applying for a position in Sweden at Karolinska Institutet (either one of the 20 assistant professorships or the "distinguish professor" track - se previous post by me), read more about neuroscience at KI here: ki.se/en/research/... Come join us!

🧵Meet the Pupillary Respiratory-Phase Response (PRP): pupils constrict during inhalation and dilate during exhalation. It is the fourth known mechanism influencing pupil size, alongside the pupillary light, near fixation, and psychosensory responses.

If you are interested in the science of smells, listen to my take on how, and why, snow smells. On the Science Friday @scifri.bsky.social show.

If you have 2 minutes to spare, please help us out by telling us what odors come to mind (and share this). We are mostly looking for people living in Sweden, but happy to get all of the world redcap.ki.se/redcap/surve... No payment I'm afraid, but you get a gold star if you do it and/or spread it!

If I can offer brief but useful advice it would be to send your drafts chapter by chapter to your supervisor as early as possible - if you send it all at once you'll have a month or 2 of downtime where you can't really do anything but wait for feedback

The limiting factor for MRI based prediction of behavioral traits may be neither the imaging nor the pipeline or learning algorith but rather the reliability of the target phenotypes Thought provoking work my Martin Gell et al: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We have a fresh new paper! The PhD project of the talented Mark Conway. A learning-induced change in the sensitivity of olfactory receptor neurons enables consistent perception of an odor. #olfaction #neuroscience www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This has been such a pleasure to work on and make new friends across the senses! In this review, we compare the evidence for perceptual penetrability across the senses-that is, to what extent cognition shapes experience as opposed to biasing it. High in olfaction, low in gustation is my take home :)

Favorite science image #3 olfactory bulb glomeruli. #neuroskyence #neuroscience

Before I go to bed let me post an amazing paper by Filipe Pereira’s group (Ervin Ascic et al) for your enjoyment. I think this is a likely fundamental breakthrough in cancer immunotherapy: personalized, yet generic and probably pan-cancer. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Ever wondered what plague smelled like? Probably not but I wrote an entry on it for the Encyclopedia of Smell History and Heritage! Masterminded by @willtullett.bsky.social this is your go-to resource for the history of olfaction. #historysmells encyclopedia.odeuropa.eu/items/show/2...

Interested in the sense of smell? An olfaction starter pack might be for you.

If you have 2 minutes to spare, help us by listing odors that come to mind. We are mostly looking for people living in Sweden, but are happy to get responses from all of the world! redcap.ki.se/redcap/surveys… If the link won't work, we are at our IRB-approved participant limit 🙂

Are you an early career scientist and want to attend the ISOT conference this summer in Iceland? Consider applying for ECRO travel support. More here: www.ecro.online/meetings/iso...

Me: Draw a brain with the olfactory bulb and piriform cortex marked. ChatGpt: The illustration of the human brain with the olfactory bulb and piriform cortex marked is now available. Me: Yeah, it seems pretty reasonable. Thanks!

The biggest contrast between "boring headline" and "amazing lede" I've ever seen.

Happy New Year! If you're celebrating with champagne, here's some chemistry behind the bubbles: wp.me/p4aPLT-SA

My experience as an editor is that it’s really hard to find reviewers during the month of December. Sometimes waiting to submit until January actually gets you a shorter turnaround time.

Interesting preprint arguing that perception relies on gamma rhythms nested in alpha rhythms. Visual processing by hierarchical and dynamic multiplexing supported by phase coding osf.io/preprints/ps... #neuroscience

Trainees: Unexpected Results ≠ Incorrect Results. Don’t ignore the data. Discuss with your advisor & repeat the experiment. Same result? You might have discovered something cool! 🧪👩🏻‍🔬

New preprint with @agustation.bsky.social and @odorjohan.bsky.social on contributions of perception and metabolic state to flavor pleasantness perception. We find additive instead of the expected interactive effects-also, mere exposure arises rapidly and obscures these effects if not accounted for 🍔

The how, when, and what of odor valence communication between the olfactory bulb and piriform cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.02.564696v1

Terrible news coming out from Israel. I hope that all my friends and their families are safe, now and going forward, and that the world condemns this barbaric slaughtering of civilians that Hamas has orchestrated.