Abstract
At a meeting devoted to chemical signals in vertebrates a contribution about the coding of odors in the brain of insects appears to be out of place. However, there are several reasons why a comparison of the mechanisms of olfactory coding across the animal kingdom is useful. Prominent among these reasons is the architectural similarity between the olfactory lobe (antennal lobe, AL) in insects and the olfactory bulb (OB) in mammals (reviewed in Hildebrand ans Shepherd, 1997). In both the AL and the OB afferent axons of olfactory receptor cells (ORC) extensively branch in olfactory glomeruli, with each individual neuron only innervating a single glomerulus (Hannson et al., 1992; Brockmann and Brückner, 1995; Mombaerts, 1996). In insects, glomeruli are interconnected by inhibitory interneurons local to the AL, which probably parallel the function of the interglomerular and the granule cells in the OB of vertebrates. From within the olfactory glomeruli of AL, projection neurons relay the processed information to higher order brain centers, such as the mushroom bodies and the lateral protocerebrum, and are comparable in function to the mitral/tufted cells in OB. A major advantage when working with insects is that individual glomeruli can be morphologically identified, and therefore their response properties can be characterized within a species by combining physiological measurements with anatomical identification of the measured glomeruli.
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Galizia, C.G., Sachse, S., Mustaparta, H. (2001). Odours are Represented in Glomerular Activity Patterns: Optical Imaging Studies in the Insect Antennal Lobe. In: Marchlewska-Koj, A., Lepri, J.J., Müller-Schwarze, D. (eds) Chemical Signals in Vertebrates 9. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0671-3_10
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