Chemotopic, combinatorial, and noncombinatorial odorant representations in the olfactory bulb revealed using a voltage-sensitive axon tracer

Odor information is first represented in the brain by patterns of input activity across the glomeruli of the olfactory bulb (OB). To examine how odorants are represented at this stage of olfactory processing, we labeled anterogradely the axons of olfactory receptor neurons with the voltage-sensitive dye Di8-ANEPPQ in zebrafish. The activity induced by diverse natural odorants in afferent axons and across the array of glomeruli was then recorded optically. The results show that certain subregions of the OB are preferentially activated by defined chemical odorant classes. Within these subregions, "ordinary" odorants (amino acids, bile acids, and nucleotides) induce overlapping activity patterns involving multiple glomeruli, indicating that they are represented by combinatorial activity patterns. In contrast, two putative pheromone components (prostaglandin F2alpha and 17alpha, 20beta-dihydroxy-4-pregnene-3-one-20-sulfate) each induce a single focus of activity, at least one of which comes from a single, highly specific and sensitive glomerulus. These results indicate that the OB is organized into functional subregions processing classes of odorants. Furthermore, they suggest that individual odorants can be represented by "combinatorial" or "noncombinatorial" (focal) activity patterns and that the latter may serve to process odorants triggering distinct responses such as that of pheromones.