Abstract
Biological communication and information systems have evolved over millions of years. Although they have been optimized under different design criteria than recent man-made technical communication systems, both are subject to the same information theoretic principles. It is the purpose of this proposal to design manageable channel models which describe information flow and signal processing by cellular and neural entities. In biology, channels are formed by transmitting intertwined chemical and electrical stimuli. A typical, however, still tractable example is the olfactory system of mammals. Mice will be used as a model to explore the basic principles of information exchange between sensory neurons and the brain by information theoretic means. Massive parallelism, optimal quantization, and information fusion will be important challenges to cope with. The final goal of this proposal is twofold. First, biologists will be provided with analytical models to simulate certain aspects of neural processes on a purely numerical basis. Second, the functionality of biological transmission channels will be explored, the basic principles will be isolated and useful features will be carried over to technical communication systems.
Keywords
- Olfactory System
- Olfactory Sensory Neurons (OSNs)
- Main Olfactory Bulb (MOB)
- Mitral Cells
- Discontinuous Neural Networks
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Arts, M., Mathar, R., Spehr, M. (2018). An Information Theoretic Approach to Stimulus Processing in the Olfactory System. In: Bossert, M. (eds) Information- and Communication Theory in Molecular Biology. Lecture Notes in Bioengineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54729-9_16
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