Better learning through distinguishing

31. A study published describes work led by the University of Geneva's (UNIGE) Faculties of Medicine and Sciences, on the indisputable role of the olfactory bulb in mammal brains' ability to discriminate between smells. This research has verified the importance of a very active neural network, which cuts, prunes, and models the sequence of electrical impulses that result from information transmitted by the nose. Although the interpretation needed to distinguish between different smells takes place in the cortex, this step is greatly facilitated by the work done by the bulb neurons who put together the information to be read. From a behavioral perspective this concerns the learning process since the brain is better at learning and recalling what it can clearly differentiate. How does the brain go about differentiating between two very similar stimuli in order to better learn them? By closely studying the sense of smell, a group of neuroscientists has broached this question and completed a study on the way the brain works when the nose is presented with two very similar perfumes. They concentrated on the first step of the process which starts with the sense of smell and ends with a gain from an ethological or behavioral perspective: from the smell to the data learned and memorized, there is a world within which certain neurons, organized in a network, get involved in order to make learning possible.