Submitted on October 16, 2008
Revised on November 3, 2008
Accepted on November 4, 2008
Is the olfactory bulb computationally similar to the retina?
Ambarish Sham Ghatpande1*
1 Monell Chemical Senses Center
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: aghatpande{at}monell.org.
The computational role of the olfactory bulb remains a mystery after sixty years of physiological research. Recently, Fantana et al. (2008) have proposed a new model of bulb function based on sparse inhibitory connections between glomeruli, the functional units of the bulb, rather than the existing lateral inhibition model. I present a summary of their model here and its implications along with comparison to recent work in the very similar Drosophila olfactory system.
