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Updated: Jun 8, 2026

Imaging Odor-Evoked Activities in the Mouse Olfactory Bulb using Optical Reflectance and Autofluorescence Signals
Published on: October 31, 2011
Odor representations in the mammalian olfactory bulb
Adil Ghani Khan1, K Parthasarathy1, Upinder Singh Bhalla1
1National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore 560065, Karnataka, India.
This review explores how the brain
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Sensory processing
- Olfactory system
Background:
- Understanding sensory stimulus representation in the brain is crucial.
- Olfactory (smell) representations are complex and debated.
- The olfactory bulb (OB) is the initial processing center for olfactory information.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review olfactory representations within the olfactory bulb.
- To examine spatial versus distributed coding theories.
- To explore the role of respiration in olfactory coding.
- To investigate how the olfactory bulb represents odor mixtures.
Main Methods:
- Literature review of existing research on olfactory bulb function.
- Analysis of theoretical models of neural representation.
- Synthesis of evidence regarding spatial and distributed coding.
- Consideration of the impact of odor sampling and mixture processing.
Main Results:
- Olfactory bulb input representations appear spatially organized.
- Subsequent processing leads to more distributed representations.
- Spatial organization at the input is minimally utilized for computation.
- The olfactory bulb effectively encodes individual odorants and complex mixtures.
Conclusions:
- The olfactory bulb employs a hybrid representation: spatial at input, distributed thereafter.
- This representation system efficiently handles single odors and complex mixtures.
- Respiration dynamics are integral to the olfactory code.
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