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Brief Communication

Nature Neuroscience 10, 27–29 (1 January 2007) | doi:10.1038/nn1819

Mechanisms of scent-tracking in humans

Jess Porter , Brent Craven , Rehan M Khan , Shao-Ju Chang , Irene Kang , Benjamin Judkewitz , Jason Volpe , Gary Settles & Noam Sobel

Whether mammalian scent-tracking is aided by inter-nostril comparisons is unknown. We assessed this in humans and found that (i) humans can scent-track, (ii) they improve with practice, (iii) the human nostrils sample spatially distinct regions separated by |[sim]|3.5 cm and, critically, (iv) scent-tracking is aided by inter-nostril comparisons.