Modern discussions about brain function focus on a computational metaphor, where brains are the substance in which information from the world is subject to computation to produce perceptual, cognitive and behavioral decisions and outputs. I will discuss how the sense of smell and the brain circuits which support this enigmatic perceptual stance challenge our notions of brain function, memory, and computation, removing the blinders that come from focusing on what we know.

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Leslie Kay is a renowned expert in olfactory brain dynamics. She is a professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, and her laboratory studies the effects of behavioral context on the neuroscience of smell and memory. She completed her undergraduate education at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, holds a PhD in Biophysics from UC Berkeley, and did her postdoctoral research at Caltech. She has been a professor at the University of Chicago for the past 25 years. Her research focuses on brain rhythms and understanding the internal physiological processes by which brains perceive scents and how those processes depend on and are influenced by personal history, present context, and chemistry, interacting with flexible and dynamic brain systems. More recently, she has turned her research interests toward studying cognitive health through the lens (or nose) of the sense of smell.