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The sense of smell is achieved through the activities of the olfactory system. It starts when an airborne odorant enters the nasal cavity and reaches olfactory epithelium (OE). The OE is protected by a thin layer of mucus, which also serves the purpose of dissolving more complex compounds into simpler chemical odorants. The size of the OE and the density of sensory neurons varies among species; in humans, the OE is only about 9-10 cm2.
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The process of olfaction, also known as the sense of smell, is a sophisticated chemical response system. The specialized sensory neurons that facilitate this process, known as olfactory receptor neurons, are situated in an upper segment of the nasal cavity, known as the olfactory epithelium. Olfactory sensory neurons are bipolar, with their dendrites extending from the epithelium's apex into the mucus that lines the nasal cavity. Airborne molecules, when inhaled, traverse the olfactory...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 28, 2026

Imaging Odor-Evoked Activities in the Mouse Olfactory Bulb using Optical Reflectance and Autofluorescence Signals

Imaging Odor-Evoked Activities in the Mouse Olfactory Bulb using Optical Reflectance and Autofluorescence Signals

Published on: October 31, 2011

Continuous Spatial Representations in the Olfactory Bulb may Reflect Perceptual Categories.

Benjamin Auffarth¹, Agustín Gutierrez-Galvez, Santiago Marco

¹Department of Computational Biology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, Sweden.

Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience

|October 21, 2011

Summary

Odor perception in rats reveals that the olfactory bulb encodes odor quality spatially. This suggests that perceptual dimensions of smell are represented similarly across species, with spatial codes being more informative than population codes.

Keywords:

glomeruli memory organization odor quality olfaction olfactory bulb perception population coding spatial coding

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Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: May 28, 2026

Imaging Odor-Evoked Activities in the Mouse Olfactory Bulb using Optical Reflectance and Autofluorescence Signals

Imaging Odor-Evoked Activities in the Mouse Olfactory Bulb using Optical Reflectance and Autofluorescence Signals

Published on: October 31, 2011

The Olfactory System as a Model to Study Axonal Growth Patterns and Morphology In Vivo

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Published on: October 30, 2014

Quadruple Immunostaining of the Olfactory Bulb for Visualization of Olfactory Sensory Axon Molecular Identity Codes

Quadruple Immunostaining of the Olfactory Bulb for Visualization of Olfactory Sensory Axon Molecular Identity Codes

Published on: June 5, 2017

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Olfactory System Research
Sensory Processing

Background:

The olfactory bulb is crucial for processing odors, filtering and organizing sensory information.
Previous research suggested perceptual odor organization in the piriform cortex, but recent studies point to the olfactory bulb's role.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how odor recognition in the rat olfactory bulb translates into a spatial map of odor quality.
To compare spatial and population codes with human perceptual similarity reports.

Main Methods:

Statistical analysis of 2-deoxyglucose images from the glomerular layer of the rat olfactory bulb.
Principal component analysis to identify odor representation dimensions.
Comparison of spatial and population codes with human perceptual data.

Main Results:

Confirmed the first principal component relates to pleasantness, while higher components remain unclear.
Identified continuous spatial representations for perceptual odor categories within the olfactory bulb.
Spatial representations provided a better match to human perceptual similarity than population codes.

Conclusions:

Perceptual odor categories may be embedded in glomerular activations within the olfactory bulb.
Spatial coding in the olfactory bulb appears to underlie olfactory perception.
Human and rat olfactory coding share related perceptual dimensions, suggesting conserved mechanisms.