Characterizing complex chemosensors: Information-theoretic analysis of olfactory systems

Tarik K. Alkasab*, Thomas C. Bozza, Thomas A. Cleland, Kathleen M. Dorries, Timothy C. Pearce, Joel White, John S. Kauer

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalComment/debatepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

The mechanisms that underlie a wine lover's ability to identify a favorite vintage and a dog's ability to track the scent of a lost child are still deep mysteries. Our understanding of these olfactory phenomena is confounded by the difficulty encountered when attempting to identify the parameters that define odor stimuli, by the broad tuning and variability of neurons in the olfactory pathway, and by the distributed nature of olfactory encoding. These issues pertain to both biological systems and to newly developed 'artificial noses' that seek to mimic these natural processes. Information theory, which quantifies explicitly the extent to which the state of one system (for example, the universe of all odors) relates to the state of another (for example, the responses of an odor-sensing device), can serve as a basis for analysing both natural and engineered odor sensors. This analytical approach can be used to explore the problems of defining stimulus dimensions, assessing strategies of neuronal processing, and examining the properties of biological systems that emerge from interactions among their complex components. It can also serve to optimize the design of artificial olfactory devices for a variety of applications, which include process control, medical diagnostics and the detection of explosives.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)102-108
Number of pages7
JournalTrends in Neurosciences
Volume22
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 1 1999

Funding

The authors' research is supported by grants from NIDCD, ONR and DARPA. The authors thank B.R. Talamo and D.D. Hunter for critically reading the manuscript.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Neuroscience

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