Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Olfaction

Olfaction

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.
The olfactory receptors are embedded in the cilia of the...

Physiology of Smell and Olfactory Pathway

Physiology of Smell and Olfactory Pathway

Humans detect odors with the help of specialized cells located in the upper part of the nasal cavity, called olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs). ORNs possess hair-like structures called cilia, which are receptive to sensations from the inhaled air. When an odorant molecule binds to a specific receptor on the cell of the cilia, it leads to a series of events that ultimately cause the ORN to send electrical signals to the olfactory bulb in the brain through the olfactory nerves.
The olfactory...

Olfactory Receptors: Location and Structure

Olfactory Receptors: Location and Structure

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...

Tactile and Chemical Senses

Tactile and Chemical Senses

Tactile senses encompass touch, temperature, and pain, each mediated by specific receptors. Touch receptors detect mechanical energy or pressure against the skin. Sensory fibers from these receptors enter the spinal cord and relay information to the brain stem. Here, most fibers cross over to the opposite side of the brain. The touch information then moves to the thalamus, which projects a map of the body's surface onto the somatosensory areas of the parietal lobes in the cerebral cortex.

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Molecular Simulations of Phase Separation in Elastic Polymer Networks.

The journal of physical chemistry. B·2026

Same author

Dynamics of phase separation in non-local elastic networks.

Soft matter·2026

Same author

Systematic Parameterization of Flory-Huggins Models from Molecular Dynamics Simulations for Ternary Lipid Mixtures.

Journal of chemical theory and computation·2025

Same author

Physics of droplet regulation in biological cells.

Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society (Great Britain)·2025

Same author

Theory of Condensate Size Control by Molecular Charge Asymmetry.

ACS macro letters·2025

Same author

Crossover patterning through condensation and coarsening of pro-crossover factors.

Nature cell biology·2025

Same journal

Analysis of strength degradation of coal and rock masses and stability of mined areas under long term immersion environment.

PloS one·2026

Same journal

Biogenic Silver-Selenium nanocomposite with anticancer activity and potent efficacy against vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

PloS one·2026

Same journal

Preparation and physicochemical characterization of a biodegradable chitosan/carboxymethyl cellulose hydrogel synthesized in NaOH/urea medium.

PloS one·2026

Same journal

Action-guilt, survivor-guilt, and depression in combat-related PTSD.

PloS one·2026

Same journal

Explainable machine learning for predicting activities of daily living at discharge in stroke patients: A retrospective study using SHAP interpretability.

PloS one·2026

Same journal

Deep learning based two-way feature depiction model for brain tumor detection.

PloS one·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 12, 2026

Constructing an Olfactometer for Rodent Olfactory Behavior Studies Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Hyperscanning Study in Psychological Counseling

Constructing an Olfactometer for Rodent Olfactory Behavior Studies Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Hyperscanning Study in Psychological Counseling

Published on: April 11, 2025

Normalized Neural Representations of Complex Odors.

David Zwicker^1,2

¹School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States of America.

|November 12, 2016

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

The olfactory system uses global inhibition in the olfactory bulb to create sparse odor representations. This helps discriminate odors but can hinder it with complex odor mixtures or varied receptor sensitivities.

More Related Videos

Real-time In Vitro Monitoring of Odorant Receptor Activation by an Odorant in the Vapor Phase

Real-time In Vitro Monitoring of Odorant Receptor Activation by an Odorant in the Vapor Phase

Published on: April 23, 2019

Simultaneous Long-term Recordings at Two Neuronal Processing Stages in Behaving Honeybees

Simultaneous Long-term Recordings at Two Neuronal Processing Stages in Behaving Honeybees

Published on: July 21, 2014

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Mar 12, 2026

Constructing an Olfactometer for Rodent Olfactory Behavior Studies Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Hyperscanning Study in Psychological Counseling

Constructing an Olfactometer for Rodent Olfactory Behavior Studies Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Hyperscanning Study in Psychological Counseling

Published on: April 11, 2025

Real-time In Vitro Monitoring of Odorant Receptor Activation by an Odorant in the Vapor Phase

Real-time In Vitro Monitoring of Odorant Receptor Activation by an Odorant in the Vapor Phase

Published on: April 23, 2019

Simultaneous Long-term Recordings at Two Neuronal Processing Stages in Behaving Honeybees

Simultaneous Long-term Recordings at Two Neuronal Processing Stages in Behaving Honeybees

Published on: July 21, 2014

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Computational Biology
Sensory Systems

Background:

The olfactory system processes complex odor information using neural networks.
The olfactory bulb employs inhibitory neurons for odor processing.
Global inhibition is hypothesized to normalize olfactory receptor input.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the impact of global inhibition on neural representations of odor composition.
To model how global inhibition shapes concentration-invariant and sparse odor codes.
To identify the consequences of global inhibition for odor discrimination.

Main Methods:

Developed a simple statistical model of olfactory bulb processing.
Analyzed the effects of varying inhibition strength on neural representations.
Simulated odor discrimination based on model outputs.

Main Results:

Global inhibition generates concentration-invariant and sparse odor representations.
Inhibition strength can be tuned for effective odor discrimination across varying concentrations and compositions.
Model predicts reduced odor discrimination for complex mixtures and heterogeneous receptor arrays.

Conclusions:

Global inhibition plays a crucial role in normalizing odor representations in the olfactory bulb.
The model provides testable predictions for experimental validation of global inhibition's function.
Understanding global inhibition is key to deciphering olfactory coding and odor perception.