Smell wiring gets set early
Mess with a baby mouse’s olfaction for too long and neurons never recover
The intricate neural wiring that carries smells to the brain locks into place soon after birth, two new mouse studies suggest. The results, published in the April 11 Science, identify a window of time in which the olfactory system can be scrambled. Once that window closes, the network becomes cemented into the brain, even as newborn neurons continuously stitch themselves into the mix.
“It is a very important finding,” says neuroscientist Leonardo Belluscio of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., who was not involved in the studies. Understanding the details of how the brain’s olfactory machinery builds and maintains itself might lead to insights into how other parts of the brain could be repaired after injury, he suggests.