Odor Detection and Discrimination

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Abstract
Olfactory receptor neurons respond to chemical compounds with a burst of action potentials. These electrical signals encode the characteristics of odors, and after being processed through the olfactory bulb, the chemosensory information they carry is distributed to the rest of the brain. This simple sequence of physiological events accounts in unknown ways for both detection and discrimination of odors. Olfactory receptor neurons are located in the olfactory epithelium in the nasal passage. Rapid advances in neurobiology are occurring with the use of techniques for the purification and expression of messenger RNA; these might be exploited for olfaction. Clonal cell lines of olfactory neurons offer solutions to many problems in transduction studies. At once, there would be a source of cells that could be stimulated reliably with defined compounds and assayed with biochemical and physiological techniques. The optical approach uses voltage-sensitive dyes that partition into the cell membrane and change their absorption or fluorescence properties in proportion to the transmembrane potential.