Since their discovery over 100 years ago, neurons in the brain's olfactory bulb, called tufted cells, have been difficult to study. By leveraging new technology, neuroscientists were able to precisely dissect the neural activity of these tufted cells for the first time. They discovered the tufted cells were better at recognizing smells than mitral cells, their neighboring neurons in the olfactory bulb. Their findings offer new explanations for how the brain processes sensory information.