Antennae

See it in a lesson

• Lesson 1

  How a fly remembers a smell

  Send a smell into a real fly brain and find where its memory is kept.

  Where the lesson uses it

  1. A fly smells with its antennae (its two feelers). Tap Stimulate to send a smell in. Watch the orange neurons light up.

     Those orange smell receptors (the smell catchers) fire first. Every smell starts here.

  Open the lesson→

Related terms

Smell receptors

Nerve cells on the antennae that fire when a smell lands on them. Every smell starts here.

Antennal lobe

The first stop for smells inside the fly’s brain, where the smell receptors hand their signal to the projection neurons.

Projection neurons

Nerve cells that carry the smell signal from the antennal lobe deeper into the brain, to the mushroom body.

Mushroom body

A mushroom-shaped part of an insect’s brain where smells are sorted and smell memories are stored.

Kenyon cells

The small nerve cells of the mushroom body. Each smell switches on a different handful of them, so every smell gets its own pattern.

Output neurons

Nerve cells that read the pattern of the Kenyon cells and pass it on to the rest of the brain. Scientists call them MBONs, short for mushroom body output neurons.