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olfactory bulb

olfactory bulb

1 7.1
A rounded part at the base of the brain just above the nose that helps you smell
  • noun
  • /ɒlˈfæktəri bʌlb/
  • Specialized
translation icon : bulbo olfativo
  • When you inhale, the scent travels to the bulb, which quickly signals the brain to recognize the odor.

Examples

  • We minimized movement artifacts by using a stainless steel headbar that had contact points both above the cerebellum and anterior to the olfactory bulb to ensure that the entire skull was rigidly fixed.

    Academic text (2016)
  • The nerve goes through those holes and synapses at the first target in the brain, which is the olfactory bulb in humans.

  • Yet we still detect brain activity from olfactory bulbs, representing the pattern, reaction, to banana smell.

  • The olfactory bulb (which is involved with our sense of smell) and the hippocampus.

    Academic text (2002)
  • Dragging flowers to the nose shows how the olfactory bulb in the brain is stimulated.

    Academic text (2015)
  • But if you look at this level, when you're behind the olfactory bulb here, you have the dorsal pallium.

  • The olfactory bulbs project directly to it, but the part that the olfactory bulb doesn't project to, it's dominated by the balance.

  • For my recordings in the olfactory bulb, I used electrodes that had an area of 312 µm².

    Blog text (3)
  • Furthermore, as mentioned above, there are regional differences in the cellular bases of neurovascular response (e.g., the olfactory bulb, neocortex, cerebellum, etc.), which may also play a role.

    Academic text (2017)
  • The olfactory bulb processes information about different smells, helping us identify various scents like flowers and food.

Surface Forms

Morphology

olfactory + bulb

The phrase is compositionally built from 'olfactory' (relating to smell) and 'bulb' (a rounded swelling or rounded structure), so a learner who knows both constituents can infer it denotes a rounded structure involved in smell processing. This is a literal, technical noun phrase following regular English compounding and is cross-linguistically transparent in scientific terminology.

Etymology

Olfactory bulb gets its name from old Latin words: olfactory comes from a word meaning 'to smell' and bulb means it is round like a plant 'bulb'. So the name fits because this round part above the nose helps the brain 'smell'.