Related papers: Trade-off between sensitivity and selectivity in o…
This work presents a general chemical reaction network theory for olfactory sensing processes that employ G-protein-coupled receptors as olfactory receptors (ORs). The theory is applicable to general mixtures of odorants and an arbitrary…
Many real-life decisions involve both perceptual processes and weighing the consequences of different actions. However, the neural mechanisms underlying perceptual decisions have typically been examined separately from those underlying…
We introduce and study an artificial neural network, inspired by the probabilistic Receptor Affinity Distribution model of olfaction. Our system consists on N sensory neurons whose outputs converge on a single processing linear threshold…
This thesis is designed to be a self-contained exposition of the neurobiological and mathematical aspects of sensory perception, memory, and learning with a bias towards olfaction. The final chapters introduce a new approach to modeling…
Communication signals often comprise an array of colors, lines, spots, notes or odors that are arranged in complex patterns, melodies or blends. Receiver perception is assumed to influence preference and thus the evolution of signal design,…
Hearing is often believed to be more sensitive than touch. This assertion is based on a comparison of sensitivities to weak stimuli. The respective stimuli, however, are not easily comparable since hearing is gauged using acoustic pressure…
We present a model for olfactory coding based on spatial representation of glomerular responses. In this model distinct odorants activate specific subsets of glomeruli, dependent upon the odorant's chemical identity and concentration. The…
For a general sensory system following an external stochastic signal, we introduce the sensory capacity. This quantity characterizes the performance of a sensor: sensory capacity is maximal if the instantaneous state of the sensor has as…
We present a novel machine learning architecture for classification suggested by experiments on olfactory systems. The network separates input stimuli, represented as spatially distinct currents, via winnerless competition---a process based…
Studies of insect olfactory processing indicate that odors are represented by rich spatio-temporal patterns of neural activity. These patterns are very difficult to predict a priori, yet they are stimulus specific and reliable upon repeated…
Using results from neurobiology on perceptual decision making and value-based decision making, the problem of decision making between lotteries is reformulated in an abstract space where uncertain prospects are mapped to corresponding…
Modeling the preferences of agents over a set of alternatives is a principal concern in many areas. The dominant approach has been to find a single reward/utility function with the property that alternatives yielding higher rewards are…
The relationship between the quality of a string, as judged by a human reader, and its probability, $p(\boldsymbol{y})$ under a language model undergirds the development of better language models. For example, many popular algorithms for…
Cooperative interactions among the binding of multiple signaling molecules is a common mechanism for enhancing the sensitivity of biological signaling systems. It is widely assumed that this increase in sensitivity of the mean response…
Direct reciprocity is a mechanism for the evolution of cooperation in repeated social interactions. According to this literature, individuals naturally learn to adopt conditionally cooperative strategies if they have multiple encounters…
The capacity with which a system of independent neuron-like units represents a given set of stimuli is studied by calculating the mutual information between the stimuli and the neural responses. Both discrete noiseless and continuous noisy…
Sensitivity analysis is widely used to assess the robustness of causal conclusions in observational studies, yet its interaction with the structure of measured covariates is often overlooked. When latent confounders cannot be directly…
Cortical sensory neurons are known to be highly variable, in the sense that responses evoked by identical stimuli often change dramatically from trial to trial. The origin of this variability is uncertain, but it is usually interpreted as…
Determining how synaptic coupling within and between regions is modulated during sensory processing is an important topic in neuroscience. Electrophysiological recordings provide detailed information about neural spiking but have…
We investigate the effect of style and category similarity in multiple datasets used for object detection pretraining. We find that including an additional stage of object-detection pretraining can increase the detection performance…