Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- A team co-led by neuroscientists at
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has shed light -- literally
-- on circuitry underlying the olfactory system in mammals,
giving us a new view of how that system may pull off some of its
most amazing feats. It has long been known from behavioral
experiments that rodents, for instance, can tell the difference
between two quite similar odors in a single sniff. But in such
instances, what precisely happens in the "wiring" leading from
sensory neurons in the nose to specialized cells in the
olfactory bulb that gather the signals and transmit them to the
brain? How can this occur within the brief span of a single
respiratory cycle -- one inhalation and one exhalation? Using a
new method of exploring this question, CSHL scientists, in
collaboration with researchers at Harvard University and the
National Centre for Biological Science in Bangalore, India, have
assembled evidence suggesting that the olfactory bulb in mice is
not merely a relay station be