Striatal neural circuits control reward-associated behaviors but the role of astrocytes is still unclear. Here, the authors show that chemogenetic manipulation of striatal astrocyte in mice restore ob...

Reward-related processes have traditionally been ascribed to neural circuits centered on the dopamine (DA) system. While exteroceptive stimuli, such as food and drugs of abuse, are well-established ac...

'DREAM Olfactory Mixtures Prediction Challenge 2025' (Synapse ID: syn64743570) is a project on Synapse. Synapse is a platform for supporting scientific collaborations centered around shared biomed...

La ricerca scientifica rappresenta un elemento strategico per lo sviluppo economico e sociale del nostro Paese. Tuttavia, la ricerca pubblica in Italia continua a soffrire di risorse limitate e spesso...

Pour ce mois de février, j'ai souhaité mettre un coup de projecteur sur un handicap méconnu et souvent passé sous silence l'anosmie... Qu'est-ce que l'anosmie ? Ce mot vous rappelle peut-être vagu...

People with changes in the overall sensory experience of food often complain of taste disturbances, although the problem is normally caused by the loss of aroma in the food (thus an olfactory disorder...

In many species, olfactory abilities in females are more acute than those in males. Studies in humans show that women have lower olfactory thresholds and are better able to discriminate and identify odors than men. In mice, odorants elicit faster activation from a larger number of olfactory bulb glomeruli in females than in males. Our study explores sex differences in olfaction in Long Evans rats from a behavioral and electrophysiological perspective. Local field potentials (LFPs) in the olfactory bulb (OB) represent the coordinated activity of bulbar neurons. Olfactory gamma (65–120 Hz) and beta (15–30 Hz) oscillations have been functionally linked to odor perception. Spontaneous and odor-evoked OB LFPs were recorded from awake rats at the same time for 12 days. Odors used included urine of both sexes and monomolecular odorants characterized previously for correlation of volatility with behavior and OB oscillations. Sampling duration in a habituation context, baseline gamma and beta power, and odor-elicited beta and gamma power were analyzed. We find that females sample odorants for a shorter duration than males (just over 1-s difference). Although baseline gamma and beta power do not show significant differences between the two sexes, odor-elicited gamma and beta power in females is significantly lower than in males. Neither sampling duration nor beta and gamma power in females varied systematically with day of estrus. We further verify that variance of these behavioral and physiological measures is not different across sexes, adding to growing evidence that researchers need not be concerned about often-claimed additional variance in female subjects. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Olfaction plays a large role in evolutionary processes. However, we know little about sex differences in olfactory bulb neurophysiology, and many scientists believe that females are more variable because of estrus. We show that female rats sniff odors for shorter durations than males and have lower power in neural oscillations related to cognition. Estrus was not related to variance in any measures. Finally, males and females show equal variance on these behavioral and physiological processes.

An omitted citation in a high-profile paper led us to examine our own practices and to help others adopt tools that promote citation diversity.

Use of the consensus protein design method facilitated the generation of stable engineered mammalian odorant receptors to gain insight into the molecular properties of odorant–receptor interactions.