Topographical relationships between olfactory receptor cells and glomerular foci in the rat olfactory bulb.

We have studied the distribution patterns of olfactory receptor cells that project to glomerular foci after HRP injections in the different bulbar surfaces of 15-day-old rats. HRP label overlapped only 2-4 contiguous glomeruli and had a maximal extent of 260 micron along the antero-posterior (A-P) axis. HRP injections were confined enough to allow labeled individual receptor cells to be discerned in the epithelial sheet. Results have shown that neurons ending in a few contiguous glomeruli of a given bulbar surface were distributed in most of the regions projecting to this bulbar surface. Moreover, within these epithelial areas, labeled cells were largely dispersed in both the frontal and the A-P axes of the nose. When few HRP-filled neurons were observed on a turbinate or a recess, their distribution seemed organized according to a certain alignment along the A-P nasal axis. Our findings demonstrate for the first time that the principal features of the regional organization of epithelium projections to a given bulbar surface are reproduced in any glomerular focus of this bulbar surface, and suggest that it could be the same for any single glomerulus. Such a principle of projection supports the concept of a large redundance in the anatomical relationship between periphery and bulb.