TY - JOUR AU - Auffarth, Benjamin AU - Kaplan, Bernhard AU - Lansner, Anders PY - 2011 M3 - Original Research TI - Map Formation in the Olfactory Bulb by Axon Guidance of Olfactory Neurons JO - Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience UR - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2011.00084 VL - 5 SN - 1662-5137 N2 - The organization of representations in the brain has been observed to locally reflect subspaces of inputs that are relevant to behavioral or perceptual feature combinations, such as in areas receptive to lower and higher-order features in the visual system. The early olfactory system developed highly plastic mechanisms and convergent evidence indicates that projections from primary neurons converge onto the glomerular level of the olfactory bulb (OB) to form a code composed of continuous spatial zones that are differentially active for particular physico-chemical feature combinations, some of which are known to trigger behavioral responses. In a model study of the early human olfactory system, we derive a glomerular organization based on a set of real-world, biologically relevant stimuli, a distribution of receptors that respond each to a set of odorants of similar ranges of molecular properties, and a mechanism of axon guidance based on activity. Apart from demonstrating activity-dependent glomeruli formation and reproducing the relationship of glomerular recruitment with concentration, it is shown that glomerular responses reflect similarities of human odor category perceptions and that further, a spatial code provides a better correlation than a distributed population code. These results are consistent with evidence of functional compartmentalization in the OB and could suggest a function for the bulb in encoding of perceptual dimensions. ER -