Researchers Make Mice Smell Odors that Aren’t Really There

Using optogenetics, scientists have simulated the sense of smell directly within the mouse brain to investigate the nature of olfactory perception.

Written byRuth Williams

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ABOVE: Olfactory bulb of an adult mouse
WIKIMEDIA, MATT VALLEY

By activating a particular pattern of nerve endings in the brain’s olfactory bulb, researchers can make mice smell a non-existent odor, according to a paper published today (June 18) in Science. Manipulating these activity patterns reveals which aspects are important for odor recognition.

“This study is a beautiful example of the use of synthetic stimuli . . . to probe the workings of the brain in a way that is just not possible currently with natural stimuli,” neuroscientist Venkatesh Murthy of Harvard University who was not involved with the study writes in an email to The Scientist.

A fundamental goal of neuroscience is to understand how a stimulus—a sight, sound, taste, touch, or smell—is interpreted, or perceived, by the brain. While a large number of studies have shown the various ways in which such stimuli activate brain cells, very little is ...

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Meet the Author

Ruth Williams
Ruth is a freelance journalist. Before freelancing, Ruth was a news editor for the Journal of Cell Biology in New York and an assistant editor for Nature Reviews Neuroscience in London. Prior to that, she was a bona fide pipette-wielding, test tube–shaking, lab coat–shirking research scientist. She has a PhD in genetics from King’s College London, and was a postdoc in stem cell biology at Imperial College London. Today she lives and writes in Connecticut.
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