This first article doesn't sound like the cartography I came here for, but it's in the title so...
Researchers present insight into the neural cartography of smell
Oct 2022, phys.org
Honestly I'm unclear as to what this means; the endoplasmic reticulum has some mediating influence on the neural computations that turn olfactory receptor stimulus into the olfactory perception of a specific odorant?
"It is mind-blowing," said Dr. Lomvardas, also a professor of neuroscience and of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. "This system found a way to create a genetically encoded, hard-wired means of transforming randomly-chosen receptor identity to a very precise target in the olfactory bulb."Perhaps, olfactory neurons are not alone in the way endoplasmic reticulum stress organizes their wiring with downstream neurons. "If it turns out that all neurons do this, this discovery could help us understand much more about the brain," said Shayya.
via Mind, Brain and Behavior Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University: Hani J. Shayya et al, ER stress transforms random olfactory receptor choice into axon targeting precision, Cell (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.08.025
Image credit: AI Art - Number Two Number One - 2022
Here's another article that makes reference to "maps" but isn't actually about navigation...
Mapping the path from smell to perception
Nov 2022, phys.org
"The last frontier of sensory neuroscience"Because previous studies of the olfactory cortex failed to find any logical organization among neurons there, many neuroscientists suspected information about odors was relayed randomly through the brain. But those studies examined connectivity patterns of just a few dozen neurons.DNA-based brain-mapping technologies charting the way sensory information is routed between olfactory-processing parts of the brain including the olfactory bulb, which receives sensory information from the nose, the primary smell-processing hub called the piriform cortex, and several other brain regions that receive inputs from the olfactory bulb.
via Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory: Yushu Chen et al, High-throughput sequencing of single neuron projections reveals spatial organization in the olfactory cortex, Cell (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.09.038
And finally, a little something about how we use olfaction to navigate...
Flies smell the motion of odors and use it to navigate, study finds
Nov 2022, phys.org
Flies can sense the direction of moving odor packets themselves, not just the wind.
Cool study design: They genetically modified fly antennae to detect light, then created fictive odor packets out of light and watched how the flies responded to these signals in both windless and windy environments.
via QBio Institute at Yale: Nirag Kadakia et al, Odour motion sensing enhances navigation of complex plumes, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05423-4
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