Watching smell smell

1999/10/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Biologia

Aided by new video techniques, neurobiologists have obtained precise images of the brain of laboratory rats at the time when rats collected odour molecules. Smell is a very sophisticated language that only the brain can understand. Therefore, if one wants to "see" the appearance of olfactory activity, one must pay special attention to its behavior. The olfactory bulbs are grouped into structures called "glomeruli", each of them about 2,000, which collect signals from the nasal receptors for later interpretation by the brain.

The researchers have focused on the consumption of oxygen for the filming of the signal, since the active cells consume more oxygen and the hemoglobin that carries oxygen absorbs less red light. In this way you can get a map of various colors and see which region is activated with each smell.