Adding and subtracting certain neurons tells researchers whether or not a locust can smell an odor
Smell a cup of coffee.
Smell it inside or outside; summer or winter; in a coffee shop with a scone; in a pizza parlor with pepperoni – even at a pizza parlor with a scone! – coffee smells like coffee.
Why don’t other smells or different environmental factors “get in the way,” so to speak, of the experience of smelling individual odors? Researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis turned to their trusted research subject, the locust, to find out. [Read more…] about The ‘surprisingly simple’ arithmetic of smell