Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2008 Aug;18(4):408-12.
doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2008.08.015. Epub 2008 Oct 8.

Neural and behavioral mechanisms of olfactory perception

Rachel I Wilson  1
Affiliations
Review

Neural and behavioral mechanisms of olfactory perception

Rachel I Wilson. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2008 Aug.

Abstract

Recent in vivo and in vitro studies have challenged existing models of olfactory processing in the vertebrate olfactory bulb and insect antennal lobe. Whereas lateral connectivity between olfactory glomeruli was previously thought to form a dense, topographically organized inhibitory surround, new evidence suggests that lateral connections may be sparse, nontopographic, and partly excitatory. Other recent studies highlight the role of active sensing (sniffing) in shaping odor-evoked neural activity and perception.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Bargmann CI. Comparative chemosensation from receptors to ecology. Nature. 2006;444:295–301. - PubMed
    1. Yokoi M, Mori K, Nakanishi S. Refinement of odor molecule tuning by dendrodendritic synaptic inhibition in the olfactory bulb. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1995;92:3371–3375. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Shepherd GM, editor. The Synaptic Organization of the Brain. New York: Oxford University Press; 1998.
    1. Luo M, Katz LC. Response correlation maps of neurons in the mammalian olfactory bulb. Neuron. 2001;32:1165–1179. - PubMed

    1. Davison IG, Katz LC. Sparse and selective odor coding by mitral/tufted neurons in the main olfactory bulb. J Neurosci. 2007;27:2091–2101. • This is the most systematic study to data of the odor selectivity of olfactory bulb M/T cells. At low odor concentrations, a M/T cell was typically excited or inhibited by a small fraction of all test odors. The odors that excited a given M/T cell sometimes shared obvious chemical features, but this was not always the case.

Publication types