Scientists teach mice to smell an odour that doesn't exist

Scientists have taught mice to smell an odour that doesn't exist in order in a study to show how the brain identifies different scents. In experiments on mice, US neuroscientists generated an electrical signature that was perceived as an odour in the brain's smell-processing centre, the olfactory bulb. Because the odour-simulating signal was handmade, researchers could manipulate the timing and order of related nerve signalling like'musical notes'. From this, they could identify which changes were most important to the ability of mice to accurately identify the'synthetic smell'. The team claims to have decoded how mammalian brains perceive odours and distinguish one smell from thousands of others.