What the odor is not: Estimation by elimination
AbstractThe olfactory system uses a small number of broadly sensitive receptors to combinatorially encode a vast number of odors. We propose that the brain decodes this distributed representation by exploiting a statistical fact: receptors that do not respond to an odor carry more information than receptors that do because they signal the absence of all odorants that bind to them. Thus, it is easier to identify what the odor is not, rather than what the odor is. For biologically realistic numbers of receptors, response functions, and odor complexity, this method of elimination turns an underconstrained decoding problem into a solvable one, allowing accurate determination of odorants in a mixture and their concentrations. A neural network realization of our algorithm resembles circuit architecture in the piriform cortex. We propose several experimental tests and show an excellent match to data from olfactory discrimination experiments. Our theory also suggests why animals from the fly to the elephant have a few hundred olfactory receptor types, give or take a small factor.