The rodent olfactory bulb provides an ideal system to investigate cell- and layer-specific contributions to neurovascular coupling using noninvasive fMRI. However, anesthesia is regularly used to minimize motion, which is known to interfere with neurovascular coupling and confounds the neural interpretation of the results. Here, we introduce a technique for reliable awake rodent fMRI of the olfactory bulb at high spatial resolutions (100 x 100 x 300 μm3). Activation maps of four unique odors are consistent with previously published 2-deoxyglucose autoradiography studies. Awake rodent olfactory fMRI is a reliable technique to reproduce neural-specific odor maps at laminar resolutions.
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