Speaker
Peter Latham
(University College London)
Description
The general problem faced by the sensory system is to
translate from spikes at sensory receptors to stimuli in the
outside world. Here we consider how the brain might do this
for olfaction, possibly the simplest of the senses. Our
starting point is a linear generative model in which the
response of each odorant receptor neuron is a linear
combination of odors in the outside world; the problem,
then, is to find the probabilistic mapping from those
responses to odors. This is equivalent to a sparse,
overcomplete model, but inference is especially hard
because we use an ultra-sparse prior in which odors
are either absent or present. We discuss our current
progress on this problem, prospects for future directions,
and what olfaction tells us about other sensory systems.
