Ambiguous signals and efficient codes
Biological Physics
2025-12-30 v1 Molecular Networks
Abstract
In many biological networks the responses of individual elements are ambiguous. We consider a scenario in which many sensors respond to a shared signal, each with limited information capacity, and ask that the outputs together convey as much information as possible about an underlying relevant variable. In a low noise limit where we can make analytic progress, we show that individually ambiguous responses optimize overall information transmission.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.23531,
title = {Ambiguous signals and efficient codes},
author = {Marianne Bauer and William Bialek},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.23531},
year = {2025}
}