The American cockroach can efficiently locate a source of the female sex pheromone also after the removal of one antenna, suggesting that bilateral comparison is not a prerequisite for pheromone localization [8,
9]. In addition, recent studies had shown that for the macroglumerulous system of the male cockroaches
allows encoding spatial 
Here, we
identified twelve types of pheromone-responsive projection neurons (PNs), each with
spatially tuned receptive field. The combination of 1) the antennotopic organization of
OSNs terminals, and 2) the stereotyped compartmentalization of PNs' dendritic
arborization within the MG, allows encoding the spatial position of the pheromone.
Furthermore, each PN type innervates a different compartment of the mushroom
bodies, providing the means for encoding spatial olfactory information along the
olfactory circuit. Finally, MG PNs exhibit both excitatory and inhibitory spatial receptive
fields, and modulate their responses based on changes in stimulus geometry. In
conclusion, we propose a mechanism for encoding information on the spatial
distribution of a pheromone, expanding both our understanding of odor coding, and of
the strategies insects adopt to localize a sexual mate.
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