Don Katz discusses the interactions between taste, smell, and learning in a new story on BrandeisNOW.
“Rats learn what food that they like from smelling the breath of other rats,” says Katz, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience. “A rat will essentially say, ‘Hey – Fred ate that and lived to tell the tale’ so later, when that rat is offered a choice, he will gravitate toward the food that he smelled on the other rat’s breath.”
How to tell what a rat likes: look at his face.
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- yuck
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- yum
