The neural machinery underlying our olfactory sense continues to be an enigma for neuroscience. A recent review in Neuron seeks to expand traditional ideas about how neurons in the olfactory bulb might encode information ...
Has a summer cold or mold allergy stuffed up your nose and dampened your sense of smell? We take it for granted that once our nostrils clear, our sniffers will dependably rebound and alert us to a lurking neighborhood skunk ...
Aug 12, 2012
2
0
Parkinson's disease is an illness well known for its motor symptoms—tremor, stiffness, and slowness of movement. In a new paper published in The Journal of Neuroscience and featured on its cover, researchers at Yale School ...
Apr 21, 2023
0
79
Whether conscious of it or not, when entering a new space, we use our sense of smell to assess whether it is safe or a threat. In fact, for much of the animal kingdom, this ability is necessary for survival and reproduction. ...
Jan 24, 2023
0
126
The reason some people fail to recover their sense of smell after COVID-19 is linked to an ongoing immune assault on olfactory nerve cells and an associated decline in the number of those cells, a team of scientists led by ...
Dec 21, 2022
0
279
Our sense of smell has a powerful effect on our behavior and emotions. Aromas can evoke vivid memories of the past or warn us of a smoldering fire. Yet to neuroscientists, smell remains the most mysterious of our five senses.
Oct 31, 2022
0
42
Though we often undervalue our ability to smell compared to our abilities to see and hear, our olfactory sense provides our brain with critical information, from detecting potential dangers like smoke to recognizing the sweet ...
Jul 28, 2022
0
866
A study published in PLOS Computational Biology describes a new model for how the olfactory system discerns unique odors. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that a simplified, statistics-based model can ...
Nov 1, 2021
0
59
For many people, the smell of fish is rather strong and unpleasant. But some people carry a mutation in a particular gene that makes that fish odor less intense, reports a paper publishing October 8 in the journal Current ...
Oct 8, 2020
0
93
Our sense of smell depends on the transmission of olfactory information from the nose to the olfactory bulb in the brain through the olfactory nerve. And without olfactory bulbs, smell isn't possible—or so scientists thought.
Nov 6, 2019
0
73
