Question

What are the olfactory lobe? What is its function?

Answer 1

The olfactory lobe may be a pair of the lobe at the anterior end of the cerebrum. They contain the endings of the olfactory nerves and are concerned with the sense of smell, being prominent within the dogfish and other animals that depend upon this sense. The axons of olfactory receptor cells extend directly into the highly organized neural structure, where information about odours is processed.

Complete answer:
The olfactory lobe is a pair of the lobe at the anterior end of the cerebrum that is at the front of the brain.
The function of the olfactory lobe:
- The olfactory lobe is concerned with the sense of odour.
- They are prominent in dogfish and animals depending on animal senses.
- Enhancing the sensitivity of odour detection
- Filtering out many background odours to enhance the transmission of a few select odours
- Permitting higher brain areas involved in arousal and attention to modify the detection or the discrimination of odours.

While all of those functions could theoretically arise from the olfactory bulb's circuit layout, it's unclear which, if any, of those functions are performed exclusively by the neural structure. By analogy to similar parts of the brain like the retina, many researchers have focused on how the neural structure filters incoming information from receptor neurons in space, or how it filters incoming information in time.

At the core of those proposed filters are the 2 classes of interneurons; the periglomerular cells, and therefore the granule cells. Processing occurs at each level of the most neural structure, beginning with the spatial maps that categorize odours within the glomeruli layer.

Note: The accessory neural structure (AOB), which resides on the dorsal-posterior region of the most neural structure, forms a parallel pathway independent from the most neural structure. The vomeronasal organ sends projections to the accessory neural structure making it the second processing stage of the accessory olfactory system. As within the main neural structure, axonal input to the accessory neural structure forms synapses with mitral cells within glomeruli. The accessory neural structure receives axonal input from the vomeronasal organ, a definite sensory epithelium from the most olfactory epithelium that detects chemical stimuli relevant for social and reproductive behaviours, but probably also generic odorants.