The most important task of the olfactory system is to generate a precise representation of odour information under different brain and behavioural states. As the first processing stage in the olfactory system and a crucial hub, the olfactory bulb plays a key role in the neural representation of odours, encoding odour identity, intensity and timing. Although the neural circuits and coding strategies used by the olfactory bulb for odour representation were initially identified in anaesthetized animals, a large number of recent studies focused on neural representation of odorants in the olfactory bulb in awake behaving animals. In this review, we discuss these recent findings, covering (a) the neural circuits for odour representation both within the olfactory bulb and the functional connections between the olfactory bulb and the higher order processing centres; (b) how related factors such as sniffing affect and shape the representation; (c) how the representation changes under different states; and (d) recent progress on the processing of temporal aspects of odour presentation in awake, behaving rodents. We highlight discussion of the current views and emerging proposals on the neural representation of odorants in the olfactory bulb.

中文翻译：

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嗅球中气味信息的复杂神经表示。

嗅觉系统最重要的任务是在不同的大脑和行为状态下生成气味信息的精确表示。作为嗅觉系统的第一个处理阶段和关键的枢纽，嗅球在气味的神经表示，编码气味识别，强度和时间安排中起着关键作用。尽管嗅觉球用于嗅觉表示的神经回路和编码策略最初是在麻醉动物中确定的，但最近的大量研究集中于觉醒行为动物嗅觉球中嗅觉剂的神经表示。在这篇评论中，我们讨论了这些最新发现，覆盖（a）嗅球内的气味表示的神经回路，以及嗅球与高级处理中心之间的功能连接；（b）嗅探等相关因素如何影响和塑造代表；（c）代表在不同状态下如何变化；（d）在清醒，表现为啮齿动物的气味表现的时间方面的处理方面的最新进展。我们重点介绍关于嗅球中气味物质的神经表征的当前观点和新兴提议的讨论。