Fear conditioning biases olfactory sensory neuron frequencies across generations

We investigated changes in the cellular composition of the olfactory
epithelium in response to an aversive stimulus. Using intact, optically
cleared main olfactory epithelia from mice that underwent olfactory fear
conditioning, we developed a dataset demonstrating that olfactory
fear conditioning increases the number of odor-encoding neurons in mice
that experience odor-shock conditioning (F0), as well as
in their unconditioned offspring (F1). We provide evidence that
the increase in F0 is due, in part, to the biasing of the stem cell layer
of the main olfactory epithelium. A robust dataset of F1 behavioral
metrics revealed subtle odor-specific differences between the offspring of
unconditioned and conditioned parents, despite the absence of an active
aversion to the conditioned odor.