We know that the nose is the tool we primarily rely on to take in smells, but the process our nose undergoes from there, in conjunction with our brains, is less understood. According to new research detailed by The New York Times , once an odor hits the receptors in our nose, it spreads those signals through a vast, highly specific network of spatial patterns leading up to our brain, a major shift from the long-held belief that this system was essentially random.

Vision, hearing, and touch all follow neat, organized maps in the brain. You touch something, and then neighboring cells process neighboring inputs. Smell, on the other hand, seemed the most chaotic department in an otherwise organized company.…