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People with better spatial memory are also better at identifying odors, according to a study published this week in Nature Communications. The study builds on a recent theory that the main reason for the evolution of smell was to help navigation because most animals support mainly on smell to find food and avoid predators. The McGill research team, led by Véronique Bohbot of the McGill Department of Psychiatry and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, hypothesized that if this were the case, there would be a problem. close connection between navigation and olfaction. The researchers were able to show, for the first time, that similar regions of the brain (the hippocampus and the medial orbitofrontal cortex) are involved in these seemingly very different activities. They also discovered that the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), known to be involved in olfaction, is also essential to spatial memory.
To test the correlation between spatial memory and the sense of smell, 57 participants (all young men and women) were asked to perform different tasks related to spatial memory. In one of them, they had about 20 minutes to explore a virtual city, browsing every street and passing important landmarks (schools, swimming pool and shops). They were then asked to find direct routes between some of the landmarks. Participants were then asked to identify 40 different smells, ranging from basil to strawberry and cinnamon.
Researchers used structural MRIs to examine various regions of the brain related to olfaction and spatial memory. They also found that gifted participants for space navigation and odor identification tended to have a larger right hippocampus (a region of the brain known). be involved in long-term memory) and a thicker left mOFC.
Given that the mofc, known for its essential role in the olfaction, had not yet been associated with space navigation, the researchers then confirmed their findings through the program. another experiment involving nine people with lesions in this area of the brain. They found that patients with mOFC lesions had olfactory and spatial memory deficits, while patients with lesions elsewhere in the brain did not have these deficits.
"We did not really know if we were going to find that people who were better at identifying odors would also be good at navigating," said Louisa Dahmani, who did the research during her PhD at the University. McGill. post-doc at Harvard. "The results were therefore a real surprise."
Véronique Bohbot, the lead author, adds: "The fact that the two functions seem to depend on similar brain regions reinforces the idea that they were brain systems evolving at the same time – although this is a theory, All this what we can say is that we now know a little more about the brain systems involved in both navigation and olfaction. "
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Material provided by McGill University. Note: Content can be changed for style and length.
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