Why Does The Water Smell Case Study

The hypothesis can be supported after the results obtained because the experimental groups changed their behavior toward the vinegar. This happened beacuse the neurons that encoded the water smell were activated and this new artificially produced smell replaced the one in the air. The rats trusting their sense signaling them it was water went to taste it and had a disgusting surprise realizing it was vinegar. These results suggest that the smell of water was indeed artificially induced into the brain. Another possible explanation we might encounter for these results is the idea that those neurons signaled out as detecting the water smell actually detect all types of smell and when we are activating the optogenetics on them we are just blocking any type of stimuli from the olfactory system. We can rule out this possibility by conducting a follow up experiment that would go something like this. With the optogentics activaitng this circuit of neurons the rats would be located in a maze with cheese somewhere to see if they can locate the source of the smell, in this case the cheese. If they can locate the cheese in a direct path then it means the inputs form the olfactory system are not blocked. If they stuble around the maze then we could be close to conclude that by …show more content…
In this case the first time group wouldn´t have tasted the vinegar even if the opotogenetics were on. The only group that would have tasted it, would have been the habituated ones because the optogentics activated the group cells where the water memory was stored after getting the memory from the experiments first phase. One hypothesis this might support is that the olfactory system works as a combination of chemical inputs and their connection with memories. Also, it supports that the inputs are processed in a different place than where they are