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IBEC researchers have uncovered how our olfactory system recognise smells

By 20 de November de 2014No Comments
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Mitral and tufted cells. Both types then project all their information to the olfactorycortex for decoding. © Brain Institute and Department of Physiology, University of Utah School of Medicine.
 20.11.2014

IBEC researchers have uncovered how our olfactory system recognise smells

IBEC's Signal and Information Processing for Sensing Systems group has found that the glomerular layer (the first stage of the olfactory bulb or input stage) where the identity and concentration information of an odour is mixed up when it enters, is indeed the origin of the olfactory system's amazing ability to quickly identify smells while still preserving information about their concentration. 

The study has been published recently in PlosOne (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0109716) and it’s the first time that this important segregation of information in odour processing has been attributed to the glomerular layer, which was already known to perform several other tasks such as contrast enhancement.

 “It does this using two different types of neurons – the mitral cells (MCs) and the external tufted cells (ETs). Both types then project all their information to the olfactory (piriform) cortex for decoding The MCs are in charge of encoding the odour’s identity, while the ETs focus on its concentration – not because of their morphological differences, but because the two types of neurons have contrasting ways of interacting within the glomerular network”, explains Agustin Gutierrez, senior researcher in the IBEC group and lead author on the paper.