Had a blast talking with Sofia Ehrich on her Internet of the Senses podcast - smell, brains, and brain health. #chemsenses #neuroskyence 🧪

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkXc...

#Chemesthesis is in the house, and I am here for it.

youtu.be/qOa6GJ6_les?...

@achems.bsky.social #ChemSenses

Need to cleanse your palate after gorging on the first day of fantastic (mostly vertebrate) taste and smell talks at #AChemS2025? Stop by our poster to hear about the feeding behavior of earthworms! tonight 4-6pm (poster #103) #ChemSenses #PUI @KeanUniversity #CougarsClimbHigher

Perception of food texture #mouthfeel and #gustation are intimately intertwined! In Drosophila, these two sensations are apparently integrated at the level of the receptor cell! #ChemSenses

AChemS abstracts submitted!! Who else is planning to be at @achems.bsky.social 2025? #chemsenses

Sex differences in olfactory behavior and neurophysiology in Long Evans rats | Journal of Neurophysiology In many species, olfactory abilities in females are more acute than those in males. Studies in humans show that women have lower olfactory thresholds and are better able to discriminate and identify odors than men. In mice, odorants elicit faster activation from a larger number of olfactory bulb glomeruli in females than in males. Our study explores sex differences in olfaction in Long Evans rats from a behavioral and electrophysiological perspective. Local field potentials (LFPs) in the olfactory bulb (OB) represent the coordinated activity of bulbar neurons. Olfactory gamma (65–120 Hz) and beta (15–30 Hz) oscillations have been functionally linked to odor perception. Spontaneous and odor-evoked OB LFPs were recorded from awake rats at the same time for 12 days. Odors used included urine of both sexes and monomolecular odorants characterized previously for correlation of volatility with behavior and OB oscillations. Sampling duration in a habituation context, baseline gamma and beta power, and odor-elicited beta and gamma power were analyzed. We find that females sample odorants for a shorter duration than males (just over 1-s difference). Although baseline gamma and beta power do not show significant differences between the two sexes, odor-elicited gamma and beta power in females is significantly lower than in males. Neither sampling duration nor beta and gamma power in females varied systematically with day of estrus. We further verify that variance of these behavioral and physiological measures is not different across sexes, adding to growing evidence that researchers need not be concerned about often-claimed additional variance in female subjects. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Olfaction plays a large role in evolutionary processes. However, we know little about sex differences in olfactory bulb neurophysiology, and many scientists believe that females are more variable because of estrus. We show that female rats sniff odors for shorter durations than males and have lower power in neural oscillations related to cognition. Estrus was not related to variance in any measures. Finally, males and females show equal variance on these behavioral and physiological processes.

It's out! Awesome study by @kruthikamaheshwar.bsky.social.
We found that female rats sample for shorter times in odor habituation. Gamma and beta oscillations in the olfactory bulb are lower amplitude for females, but only during odor sampling. #ChemSenses #neuroskyence 🧪
doi.org/10.1152/jn.0...

Due to the parts of the conversation they chose to highlight for the video, I do come off more like an ecologist than a #neuroscientist but anything that gets the word out about why studying the chemical senses of earthworms is important is a positive.
#PUG #虫 #ChemSenses #neuroscience #earthworms

Kean University recently interviewed me about my #undergraduate focused #earthworm #research.

#PUG #虫 #ChemSenses #neuroscience

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D16C...

#chemsenses

This is one of my favorite #chemsenses facts!

Busy week! On Wednesday the lab presented our earthworm #ChemSenses research at Kean University #UndergraduateResearch day. Then this Jon Mebrahtu presented our research on how amino acids alter the feeding rate of earth worms at the 2024 @achems.bsky.social meeting! #invertebrates