Dr. Jonathan Victor is part of a team of researchers that last fall received a $6.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation aimed at uncovering the universal algorithms at work in the nervous system when animals use olfaction to navigate. An understanding of this neural circuitry could shed light on the human brain — and spur the development of technology to replicate the services that animals provide, thus keeping highly trained and often valuable animals out of dangerous situations. Other potential applications could lie in medicine or agriculture; for example, Dr. Victor says, "if we understand how insects use smell to navigate, we have the potential to alter their navigational strategy — for example, by selectively altering the neurons that carry out crucial computations — so that they could no longer search for us effectively."
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