Number of mitral cells and the bulb volume in the aging human olfactory bulb: A quantitative morphological study

The present study documents the morphological changes in the aging human olfactory bulb. Eight bulb pairs from white females between the ages of 25 and 102 years were used. The number of mitral cells in layers IV and III was determined for each bulb and corrected for spilt cell error. Counts were made on 10‐μm thick Nissl‐stained sections at 250‐μm intervals. The mean number of mitral cells per olfactory bulb at age 25 was estimated from linear regression to be 50,935; at age 60, 32,718; and at age 95, 14,501. The average loss over the time interval studied was 520 mitral cells per year.

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