Special Senses / VISUAL EXPLAINER
Where Do Smell Axons Meet in the Olfactory Bulb?
Olfactory sensory axons converge in bulb glomeruli, where they meet dendrites of bulb neurons. Related receptor inputs are organized together, but an everyday smell involves distributed activity, not a single glomerulus standing for the entire experience.
READ THE IMAGE
What the illustration shows
Dark navy anatomy poster with luminous gold olfactory sensory axons entering a rounded neural neuropil region above a cyan mitral cell. Its continuous apical dendrite branches into a tuft within the region labeled Glomerulus. An enlarged inset separates a gold presynaptic bouton from a cyan dendritic surface by a visible synaptic cleft. Two lower panels explain convergence of similar inputs and distributed smell representation, explicitly not an exact human receptor-to-glomerulus map. Colors, membranes, synaptic symbols, neuron counts and scales are conceptual; omitted circuitry is not absent. Gold AllHumanBody.com and the complete slogan appear on a plain navy footer. The glow is illustrative color coding, not measured neural light emission.
How to interpret this poster
- Detailed convergence evidence often comes from animals; no exact human receptor-to-glomerulus map, fixed count or one-to-one claim.
- The neuropil outline is a conceptual region, not a capsule or vessel. Other local cells and circuits are omitted, not absent.
- Synaptic symbols, cell sizes, branch complexity and colors are schematic; glow is not measured neural light emission.
- AI-assisted educational illustration; not physician certification, microscopy, a diagnosis or individualized medical advice.
- Fine annotations need enlargement; the full description provides an accessible text alternative.
- Display the full uncropped illustration; do not trim titles, legends or boundary annotations.
AI-assisted educational illustration, adapted into web-sized images without changing its composition. This is general education, not an individual diagnosis or treatment recommendation.
EVIDENCE / CONTEXT
Sources and what they support
- Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience: 8.3 The Olfactory System ↗
Sensory convergence, glomerular synaptic architecture and projection-cell dendritic inputs.