Sniff mechanics
Harvard scientists are shedding light on a neural feedback mechanism that may play a key role in how the olfactory system works in the brain. The mechanism was first identified more than a century ago, but little was understood about its workings till now. As described in a Dec. 19 paper in Neuron by Venkatesh Murthy, a professor of molecular and cellular biology, researchers have, for the first time, described how that feedback mechanism works by identifying where the signals go, and which type of neurons receive them. Three scientists from the Murthy lab were involved in the work: Foivos Markopoulos, Dan Rokni, and David Gire. “The image of the brain as a linear processor is a convenient one, but almost all brains, and certainly mammalian brains, do not rely on that kind of pure feed-forward system,” Murthy said. “On the contrary, it now appears that the higher regions of the brain,...