Functional neurology of a brain system: a 3D olfactory bulb model to process natural odorants.

The network of interactions between mitral and granule cells in the olfactory bulb is a critical step in the processing of odor information underlying the neural basis of smell perception. We are building the first computational model in 3 dimensions of this network in order to analyze the rules for connectivity and function within it. The initial results indicate that this network can be modeled to simulate experimental results on the activation of the olfactory bulb by natural odorants, providing a much more powerful approach for 3D simulation of brain neurons and microcircuits.