NEUR3112 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Olfactory Bulb, Olfaction, Rodent
Document Summary
Remove bone above the ob of an anaesthetised rodent. Apply a dye that allows you to see electrical activity. Different odorants produce distinctive patterns of glomerular activation -> the odotopic map . Look at brain, see where glomeruli stimulation is occurring -> know what odour is being perceived. Rather few glomeruli are active -> the olfactory code is quite sparse. Hence, different odours can be represented without too much overlap. M and t cells are often reported as m/t cells because they are essentially the same. 2 type of inhibitory neurons to reduce over excitation -> there are the pg and gr cells -> don"t need to remember. If these weren"t here, then epilepsy would occur. The olfactory bulb seems to identify odour components. Odour mixtures are not well-discriminated -> olfactory cortex generates odour images (may also be important for olfactory memory) -> don"t smell individual components, but overall recognition of the mixture as a specific thing.
