How good are we at detecting a specific smell in a mixture of smells – for example, the fragrance of a stargazer lily in a large bouquet of…
Animals balance efficiency and flexibility during natural behavior to make their decisions in different contexts. In a recent study published in Current Biology (PDF) the Murthy lab has…
Brains process external information rapidly at a sub-second time scale, which is set by the dynamic electrophysiological properties of neurons and the fast communication within neuronal populations. This…
Venki Murthy returned this week from his summer "vacation" in balmy Santa Barbara, CA, where he coordinated an eight-week program on the ins and outs of olfaction. Hosted…
Natural environments are rich with sensory stimuli. To make sense of the sensory clutter, animals must segregate objects of interest from ever varying backgrounds. Our visual system is…
David Gire paved his path-to-the-postdoc with collaboration and interdisciplinary inspiration. At Silver Creek High School in San Jose, CA, Gire’s AP Biology/Biotech teacher, Mark Okuda (soon to become…
When we sniff an odor, it is first detected by a set of specific odorant receptors expressed by olfactory receptor neurons in the nose. Olfactory receptor neurons then…
What is the function of a sensory system? One straightforward idea is that it strives to create a complete and accurate internal representation of the external world, which…
You can't miss it in the news these days: neuroscientists are excited about anatomical reconstruction of neural connectivity. In fact, the term "connectomics" is a frequently-edited entry in…
Unlike humans, most animals rely heavily on scents to collect information about their external environment, and in particular assess the friendly or not-so-friendly nature of encounters with other…
