Abstract

About half of all extant vertebrates are teleost fishes. Although our knowledge about anatomy and function of their olfactory systems still lags behind that of mammals, recent advances in cellular and molecular biology have provided us with a wealth of novel information about the sense of smell in this important animal group. Its paired olfactory organs contain up to five types of olfactory receptor neurons expressing OR, TAAR, VR1- and VR2-class odorant receptors associated with individual transduction machineries. The different types of receptor neurons are preferentially tuned towards particular classes of odorants, that are associated with specific behaviors, such as feeding, mating or migration. We discuss the connections of the receptor neurons in the olfactory bulb, the differences in bulbar circuitry compared to mammals, and the characteristics of second order projections to telencephalic olfactory areas, considering the everted ontogeny of the teleost telencephalon. The review concludes with a brief overview of current theories about odor coding and the prominent neural oscillations observed in the teleost olfactory system.