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Comparative study of chemical neuroanatomy of the olfactory neuropil in mouse, honey bee, and human

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Abstract

Despite divergent evolutionary origins, the organization of olfactory systems is remarkably similar across phyla. In both insects and mammals, sensory input from receptor cells is initially processed in synaptically dense regions of neuropil called glomeruli, where neural activity is shaped by local inhibition and centrifugal neuromodulation prior to being sent to higher-order brain areas by projection neurons. Here we review both similarities and several key differences in the neuroanatomy of the olfactory system in honey bees, mice, and humans, using a combination of literature review and new primary data. We have focused on the chemical identity and the innervation patterns of neuromodulatory inputs in the primary olfactory system. Our findings show that serotonergic fibers are similarly distributed across glomeruli in all three species. Octopaminergic/tyraminergic fibers in the honey bee also have a similar distribution, and possibly a similar function, to noradrenergic fibers in the mammalian OBs. However, preliminary evidence suggests that human OB may be relatively less organized than its counterparts in honey bee and mouse.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Ryan Brackney for discussion of the work. Research on the honey bee was performed under awards to BHS from NIH-NIGMS (GM113967), NSF (1556337) the Human Frontiers Science Foundation. Research on the mouse was performed under an award from the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium (ADHS14-052688, BHS) and NIH R01-NS097537 to JN. RCG is supported by NIMH (R01MH106674) and NIBIB (R01EB021711). We thank the NIMBioS Workshop Olfactory Modeling. (March 1–4, 2016, Knoxville, TN) for group discussion of the mammalian OB organization.

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Correspondence to Irina Sinakevitch or Brian H. Smith.

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This article is published as part of the Special Issue on Neural Coding Workshop, NC 2016, Cologne.

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Sinakevitch, I., Bjorklund, G.R., Newbern, J.M. et al. Comparative study of chemical neuroanatomy of the olfactory neuropil in mouse, honey bee, and human. Biol Cybern 112, 127–140 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-017-0728-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-017-0728-8

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