Related papers: Harnessing thermal fluctuations for selectivity ga…
Noise aids the encoding of continuous signals into pulse sequences by way of stochastic resonance and endows the encoding device with a preferred frequency. We study encoding by a threshold device based on the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process,…
Binary choices, as often used for reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), convey only the direction of a preference. A person may choose apples over oranges and bananas over grapes, but which preference is stronger? Strength is…
Understanding how molecular structure gives rise to odor perception remains a long-standing challenge, with ongoing debate over whether olfaction is primarily governed by molecular shape, vibrational properties, or their interplay at the…
Animals use stereo sampling of odor concentration to localize sources and follow odor trails. We analyze the dynamics of a bilateral model that depends on the simultaneous comparison between odor concentrations detected by left and right…
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…
Motivated by a proposed olfactory mechanism based on a vibrationally-activated molecular switch, we study electron transport within a donor-acceptor pair that is coupled to a vibrational mode and embedded in a surrounding environment. We…
Olfaction, the sense of smell, has received scant attention from a signal processing perspective in comparison to audition and vision. In this paper, we develop a signal processing paradigm for olfactory signals based on new scientific…
The olfactory system removes correlations in natural odors using a network of inhibitory neurons in the olfactory bulb. It has been proposed that this network integrates the response from all olfactory receptors and inhibits them equally.…
The inclusion of a threshold in the dynamics of layered neural networks with variable activity is studied at arbitrary temperature. In particular, the effects on the retrieval quality of a self-controlled threshold obtained by forcing the…
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…
The validity of the dissipative quantum model of olfaction has not been examined yet and therefore the model suffers from the lack of experimental support. Here, we generalize the model and propose a numerical analysis of the dissipative…
Fluctuation theorems have become an important tool in single molecule biophysics to measure free energy differences from non-equilibrium experiments. When significant coarse-graining or noise affect the measurements, the determination of…
Olfaction sensing in autonomous robotics faces challenges in dynamic operations, energy efficiency, and edge processing. It necessitates a machine learning algorithm capable of managing real-world odor interference, ensuring resource…
We show that, in optical pump-probe experiments on bulk samples, the statistical distribution of the intensity of ultrashort light pulses after the interaction with a nonequilibrium complex material can be used to measure the time-dependent…
Cells are known to utilize biochemical noise to probabilistically switch between distinct gene expression states. We demonstrate that such noise-driven switching is dominated by tails of probability distributions and is therefore…
An improved method for Fluctuation Enhanced Sensing (FES) is introduced. We enhanced the old binary fingerprinting method, where the fingerprint bit values were +/- 1, by introducing ternary fingerprints utilizing a reference odor. In the…
In the olfactory system, odor percepts retain their identity despite substantial variations in concentration, timing, and background. We propose a novel strategy for encoding intensity-invariant stimuli identity that is based on…
Thermodynamic parameters such as temperature and pressure can be defined from the statistical behavior of a system. Therefore, thermal fluctuation is an inseparable characteristic of these parameters which eventually finds its way into…
The applications of Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) have expanded tremendously in the last 25 years, and the technique has become a staple technique in many biological and biophysical fields. FRET can be used as spectroscopic…
Using a combination of theory and computer simulations, we study the translocation of an RNA molecule, pulled through a solid-state nanopore by an optical tweezer, as a method to determine its secondary structure. The resolution with which…