Quick Facts
The cell body is the portion of a cell that contains the nucleus, independent of projections such as an axon or dendrites (Dorland, 2011).
Related parts of the anatomy
Structure and/or Key Features
The cell body is a component of olfactory sensory neuron. The diameter of each olfactory cell body spans about 5–8 μm. Situated within the cell body is a large nucleus along with one or two nucleoli. The larger aspect of the cytoplasm is concentrated towards the apex of the cell body. This part of the cytoplasm contains the Golgi apparatus, a few mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, as well as microtubules and intermediate filaments (Fujita, Kanno and Kobayashi, 2012).
The cell body narrows superiorly, towards the basal aspect of the olfactory epithelium, to become the axon.
Anatomical Relations
Olfactory sensory neurons are bipolar neurons that are situated within the olfactory epithelium. Each neuron has two ends. One end has a 2 μm in diameter solitary unbranched dendrite, which extends inferiorly towards the epithelial surface. The other end has a 0.2 μm in diameter unmyelinated axon, which extends superiorly, and traverses the basement membrane on its way to the lamina propria (Standring, 2016). Their cell body lies interposed between the axon and the dendrite in the middle segment of the olfactory epithelium.
Function
The cell body is a principal part of the olfactory sensory neuron. It essentially receives sensory neural information from the epithelial surface via the dendrites and conveys the information to the olfactory bulb via the axons during the process of olfactory transduction. This facilitates the sense of smell.
Clinical Correlates
—Anosmia
References
Dorland, W. (2011) Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary. 32nd edn. Philadelphia, USA: Elsevier Saunders.
Fujita, T., Kanno, T. and Kobayashi, S. (2012) The Paraneuron. Springer Japan.
