Tag: Odor

  • Nation & World

    Teaching computers to identify odors

    Using a machine-learning algorithm, researchers were able to “train” a computer to recognize the neural patterns associated with various scents, and identify whether specific odors were present in a mix of smells.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sense of scents

    A new study sheds light on the extent to which animals can make distinctions among scents.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Something doesn’t smell right

    Harvard scientists say they’re closer to unraveling one of the most basic questions in neuroscience — how the brain encodes likes and dislikes — with the discovery of the first receptors in any species evolved to detect cadaverine and putrescine, two of the chemical byproducts responsible for the distinctive — and to most creatures repulsive…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Circuits of sense and sensibility’

    A Harvard biologist succeeds in mapping a neural network for learned olfactory behavior, using a roundworm model to trace the dislike of a particular smell to the reaction that avoids it.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The nose knows

    Harvard researchers have shed light on how the sense of smell works to induce behavior, linking patterns of electrical spikes in the brain to behavior in laboratory animals.

    3 minutes