Related papers: Selectivity gain in olfactory receptor neuron at o…
We present a model of an olfactory system that performs odor segmentation. Based on the anatomy and physiology of natural olfactory systems, it consists of a pair of coupled modules, bulb and cortex. The bulb encodes the odor inputs as…
Olfactory systems use a small number of broadly sensitive receptors to combinatorially encode a vast number of odors. We propose a method of decoding such distributed representations by exploiting a statistical fact: receptors that do not…
The mushroom body is the key network for the representation of learned olfactory stimuli in Drosophila and insects. The sparse activity of Kenyon cells, the principal neurons in the mushroom body, plays a key role in the learned…
Our sense of smell relies on sensitive, selective atomic-scale processes that are initiated when a scent molecule meets specific receptors in the nose. However, the physical mechanisms of detection are not clear. While odorant shape and…
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,…
Here we introduce the Olfactory Perception (OP) benchmark, designed to assess the capability of large language models (LLMs) to reason about smell. The benchmark contains 1,010 questions across eight task categories spanning odor…
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…
Recordings from neurons in the insects' olfactory primary processing center, the antennal lobe (AL), reveal that the AL is able to process the input from chemical receptors into distinct neural activity patterns, called olfactory neural…
The brain encodes external stimuli through patterns of neural activity, forming internal representations of the world. Recent experiments show that neural representations for a given stimulus change over time. However, the mechanistic…
Neurons in the primary visual cortex are more or less selective for the orientation of a light bar used for stimulation. A broad distribution of individual grades of orientation selectivity has in fact been reported in all species. A…
Locating the source of odor in a turbulent environment - a common behavior for living organisms - is non-trivial because of the random nature of mixing. Here we analyze the statistical physics aspects of the problem and propose an efficient…
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…
Animal behavior and neural recordings show that the brain is able to measure both the intensity of an odor and the timing of odor encounters. However, whether intensity or timing of odor detections is more informative for olfactory-driven…
In dynamic flow fields, various animals exhibit remarkable odor search capabilities despite relying on stochastic detections. Interestingly, there exists an optimal time window for integrating these detections that maximizes search…
Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets) have been introduced as a method to sample a diverse set of candidates with probabilities proportional to a given reward. However, GFlowNets can only be used with a predefined scalar reward, which can be…
Odor detection underpins food safety, environmental monitoring, medical diagnostics, and many more fields. The current artificial sensors developed for odor detection struggle with complex mixtures while non-invasive recordings lack…
We consider the problem of olfactory searches in a turbulent environment. We focus on agents that respond solely to odor stimuli, with no access to spatial perception nor prior information about the odor. We ask whether navigation to a…
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…
Storing memory for molecular recognition is an efficient strategy for responding to external stimuli. Biological processes use different strategies to store memory. In the olfactory cortex, synaptic connections form when stimulated by an…
Biological circuits have evolved to incorporate multiple modules that perform similar functions. In the fly olfactory circuit, both lateral inhibition (LI) and neuronal spike frequency adaptation (SFA) are thought to enhance pattern…