Burt and Tyrone have Different Smelly Brains!
Now that you know we also use pee and olfactory signals to communicate with each other, I want to tell you about another experiment designed to test how the neurons in our brain work to understand these smells. The scientists put these little needles called electrodes in specific regions of our brain, and then pass water that contains different types of smells (or odors) over our noses to see how our brain responds. When the neuron they’re recording from gets important information from our olfactory epithelium, it fires what’s called an ‘action potential’ (this is caused by ions like sodium and potassium crossing the cell membrane through channels). The researchers can then compare this firing activity after application of these different smells to determine which ones might be most important to us! In the first experiments, they’re doing these recordings in us males. Right now, I’m a dominant male, meaning that I successfully defend my territory, mate with the ladies, and sport thi