Science Daily: Every moment of every day the brain is forced to process thousands of separate odorants from the world around us.
Through a new study of honeybees, scientists at UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute have discovered the brain has an advanced ability to isolate specific odours and recollect smells.
“There’s a lot of information coming into the brain whenever a scent is detected and it would be difficult to process it all,” lead researcher Dr Judith Reinhard said.
“We’ve found that honeybees pick only a handful of so-called ‘key odorants’ out of every complex aroma that they really learn. They may remember just two or three odorants from a couple of hundred, the rest are ignored.”
Colleague Dr Charles Claudianos said if you had to learn the hundreds of compounds your brain would be overwhelmed with information.