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Kenyon cells

Featured Neuroscience

·October 28, 2021·4 min read

Dopamine’s Many Roles, Explained

Study reveals dopamine neurons that play a role in learning and memory also drive motivation.

Featured Neuroscience

·May 11, 2020·2 min read

How to tune out common odors and focus on important ones

Researchers explain how odor habituation occurs. Familiar smells can be ignored in favor of new odors that are faint, but important.

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·July 19, 2018·6 min read

Complete Fly Brain Image at Nanoscale Resolution

HHMI researchers used electronic microscopy technology to generate a high resolution digital snapshot of the adult fruit fly brain.

Featured Genetics Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·May 1, 2018·3 min read

How Decisions Form in the Brain

Researchers describe what happens in the brain just prior to making a decision.

Image shows mushroom bodies and kenyon cells.

Featured Neuroscience

·December 17, 2015·4 min read

Rerouting Odor Information to Produce Flexible Behavior

A new study shows how dopamine can help change the flow of information in the brain.

The mushroom cells are highlighted in white and pink in these brain scans.

Featured Neuroscience Neuroscience Videos

·March 3, 2014·3 min read

A Sparse Memory Is a Precise Memory

Researchers discover a key to forming distinct associative memories lies in how information from the senses is encoded in the brain.

Featured Neuroscience

·October 21, 2013·3 min read

Neuron ‘Claws’ in the Brain Enable Flies to Distinguish One Scent from Another

Using fruit flies, researchers discover how the brain integrates multiple signals to identify unique smells.

The images above depict the activity of the mushroom body Kenyon cells in the fruit fly brain in response to 3 different odors.

Featured Neuroscience

·June 18, 2013·4 min read

The Discerning Fruit Fly: Linking Brain-Cell Activity and Behavior in Smell Recognition

Researchers have mapped the activity of brain cells in the mushroom body of flies conditioned to have Pavlovian behavioral responses to different odors. The findings suggest the activity of as few as 25 neurons are required to be able to distinguish between different odors.