Announcements | Centre for Modeling and Simulation | Savitribai Phule Pune University

Colloquium | Can we smell a trillion odors? A theoretical perspective on the coding capacity of olfactory networks

Title	Can we smell a trillion odors? A theoretical perspective on the coding capacity of olfactory networks
Speaker	Collins Assisi, Assistant Professor, IISER pune http://www.iiserpune.ac.in/people/faculty-details/95
Date & Time	Saturday, 02 March 2019 \| 10:00-11:30
Venue	Kelkar Lab, CMS, SPPU.
Abstract	Animals are exquisitely sensitive to odorants in the environment. In fact, behavioral experiments have suggested that humans can discriminate anywhere between 10,000 to a trillion odorants. Whether the numbers are merely large or astronomical is still a matter of vociferous debate. Odors are represented in the brain as the spatiotemporal activation of densely connected networks of neurons. Therefore, the question of whether we can discriminate a trillion odorants can be posed as, can a network reliably generate a trillion distinct patterns? We address this question using a computational model of an olfactory bulb network. The number and stability of patterns generated by the network are constrained by the topology of interactions between the neurons. We show that even small networks (with 81 neurons) are capable of generating a trillion distinct spatiotemporal patterns.
Organizer/Host	Pranav Kulkarni / Abhinav Raj

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