olfaction

Ancient olfaction protein is shared by many bugs, offering new pest control target

...years of evolution but that the gene's function in olfaction has also been conserved. Future designs of pesticides and disease-controlling insect repellents may be able to utilize this commonality to "blind" the insects to the smell of their prey. Walton D. Jones, Thuy-Ai T. Nguyen, Brian Kloss, Kevin J. Lee,...

Nose odors and mouth odors: The brain distinguishes

...chers have presented the first clear evidence that olfaction is uniquely a "dual" sense, in that the brain perc... powerful that people routinely mistake retronasal olfaction for 'taste,'" they wrote. "For example, we may say that we like the 'taste' of a wine, because of it...

Fighting malaria by manipulating mosquitoes' sense of smell

...ike insecticides, the chemicals involved in insect olfaction tend to be relatively non-toxic. They also tend to be specific to closely related species, so widespread application is not likely to impact other beneficial insect populations. The researchers intend to set up a pipeline for identifying and testing...

Neuroscientists discover new cell type that may help brain maintain memories of smells

...g the odor begins. One of the puzzling aspects of olfaction is how our perception of an odor can evolve over multiple sniffs. Because of their unique ability to maintain their activity between sniffs, Blanes cells may provide the missing link needed to answer this critical question. While there are relativ...

Can dogs smell cancer?

... per trillion. The clinical implications of canine olfaction first came to light in the case report of a dog alerting its owner to the presence of a melanoma by constantly sniffing the skin lesion. Subsequent studies published in major medical journals confirmed the ability of trained dogs to detect both mela...

Quick -- what’s that smell?

...timuli. "Previous published work suggested that olfaction was different from vision and audition in lacking this fundamental property," notes senior author Alan Gelperin, PhD, a computational neuroscientist. "We now can use accumulated information about these other sensory systems to help us understand olfa...

Detecting explosives with honeybees

...iological differences between those bees with good olfaction and those without. They also determined how well bees could detect explosives in the presence of potentially interfering agents, such as lotions, motor oil, or insect repellant. In addition, the team studied structural units in the honey bee's anten...

OHSU lab finds meth receptor that could lead to therapy

...ing areas involved in motivation and drug craving, olfaction ?the sense of smell ?and temperature regulation, to name a few. "With this kind of pharmacological profile and brain distribution, we hypothesized TAAR1 could mediate some of meth’s metabolic and behavioral effects," explained Grandy, who also dir...