california

A key feature of human and animal brains is that they are adaptive; they are able to change their structure and function based on input from the environment and on the potential associations, or consequences, of that input. For example, if a person puts his hand in a fire and gets burned, he learns to avoid flames; the simple sight of a flame has acquired a predictive value, which in this case, is repulsive. To learn more about such neural adaptability, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have explored the brains of insects and identified a mechanism by which the connections in their brain change to form new and specific memories of smells.