Daily briefing: Octopuses’ strange brains might teach us what intelligence really is

You have full access to this article via your institution. Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here . A microscope cross-sectional image of a mouse nose, showing the anatomical structure of the nasal epithelium. Credit: Datta Lab The most detailed map ever of the olfactory receptors in the mouse nose transforms our understanding of the sense of smell . Instead of a handful of broad zones, in which receptors are essentially random, “each receptor adopts a particular position in the nose”, says neurobiologist and study co-author Sandeep Robert Datta. And the arrangement of receptors in the nose is mirrored in the part of the brain responsible for smell. “This means that the maps in the nose and the brain are not two separate problems the system has to solve, but two readouts of the same developmental logic,” says psychologist and experimental neuroscientist Johan Lundström. “This is a landmark paper that overturns one of the foundational textbook models of olfactory organization.” Nature | 6 min read Reference: Cell paper 1 & paper 2 As concerns rise about the environmental footprint of data centres, companies are starting to talk about putting the huge banks of computers in orbit. But the hurdles are significant , experts say. For example, data centres need to dissipate a lot of heat, and space, though cold, is a vacuum — so it keeps heat in like an insulated coffee cup. …