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New research shows how quickly the brain recognizes odors |
| TheAllINeed.com |
(NC&T/BU) The sense of smell begins when we inhale or 'sniff' an odor, allowing odor molecules to reach receptor cells in the nose, which then send information about the odor into the olfactory bulb of the brain. Recent research led by Matt Wachowiak, Assistant Professor in the Boston University Department of Biology, shows that, once it receives this information, the brain can respond to odors faster than previously thought – in as little as 1/20th of a second. And, surprisingly, recognition of the odor can occur even before a complete 'image' of it is formed within the brain.
"It's been known for awhile that animals, including humans, can discriminate one odor from another in a couple of hundred milliseconds, but no one looked at what the brain is doing during that time" said Matt Wachowiak, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology and team leader. "To our surprise the brain's processing response - 50 to 70 milliseconds to identify an odor - was much faster than we thought. The slowest part is getting the information from the nose to the brain."
Wachowiak and his team said their research contributes to one of neuroscience's main missions – understanding how the brain encodes and processes information. In their work, the Boston University team relied on the fact that rats naturally respond to different stimuli – including novel odors – with a distinctive exploratory sniffing behavior. They then presented different odors to the rat and used its sniffing response to gauge the exact time that the animal perceived the odor.
In a key technical development, the team also imaged neural activity in the rat's brain as the odor perception occurred, allowing them to literally see what the brain was smelling.
This study is one of the first to image brain activity in a behaving rodent as it performs a sensory task. Imaging from the brain of the awake, behaving animal is an ideal way to link neural activity to behavior, Wachowiak added.
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