Olfactory Atlas

These pretty swirls look almost botanical, but this is not a flower, it’s the organ used to smell one. The image is a cross section of the interior of a nose – specifically a mouse nose – with the neurons highlighted in green. By analysing the gene expression [which genes are 'on'] and distribution of several million of these nasal sensory cells from hundreds of mice, scientists have created a map of the nose. Each olfactory neuron displays a specific type of receptor that binds a specific odour molecule, and these neurons, it turns out, are not randomly distributed. Instead, they form horizontal stripes of receptor types from the top of the nose to the bottom. Furthermore, this nose map matches that of the olfactory bulb – a structure in the brain that processes odour information. Researchers are now investigating whether human noses are mapped out similarly – information that may guide research into cures for anosmia.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by David H. Brann and colleagues
• Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
• Image originally published with no restrictions – hence published here with as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Cell, April 2026