The perception of innocuous temperatures is crucial for thermoregulation. The TRP ion channels TRPV1 and TRPM2 have been implicated in warmth detection, yet their precise roles remain unclear. A key challenge is the low prevalence of warmth-sensitive sensory neurons, comprising fewer than 10% of rodent dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons. Using calcium imaging of >20,000 cultured mouse DRG neurons, we uncovered distinct contributions of TRPV1 and TRPM2 to warmth sensitivity. TRPV1’s absence – and to a lesser extent absence of TRPM2 – reduces the number of neurons responding to warmth. Additionally, TRPV1 mediates the rapid, dynamic response to a warmth challenge. Behavioural tracking in a whole-body thermal preference assay revealed that these cellular differences shape nuanced thermal behaviours. Drift diffusion modelling of decision-making in mice exposed to varying temperatures showed that TRPV1 deletion impairs evidence accumulation, reducing the precision of thermal choice, while TRPM2 deletion increases overall preference for warmer environments that wildtype mice avoid. It remains unclear whether TRPM2 in DRG sensory neurons or elsewhere mediates thermal preference. Our findings suggest that different aspects of thermal information, such as stimulation speed and temperature magnitude, are encoded by distinct TRP channel mechanisms.

The experience-dependent spatial cognitive process requires sequential organization of hippocampal neural activities by theta rhythm, which develops to represent highly compressed information for rapid learning. However, how the theta sequences were developed in a finer timescale within theta cycles remains unclear. In this study, we found in rats that sweep-ahead structure of theta sequences developing with exploration was predominantly dependent on a relatively large proportion of FG-cells, that is a subset of place cells dominantly phase-locked to fast gamma rhythms. These ensembles integrated compressed spatial information by cells consistently firing at precessing slow gamma phases within the theta cycle. Accordingly, the sweep-ahead structure of FG-cell sequences was positively correlated with the intensity of slow gamma phase precession, in particular during early development of theta sequences. These findings highlight the dynamic network modulation by fast and slow gamma in the development of theta sequences which may further facilitate memory encoding and retrieval.