Principles of odor coding and a neural network for odor discrimination

A concept of olfactory coding is proposed. It describes the stimulus responses of all receptor cells by the use of vector spaces. The morphological convergence pattern between receptor cells and glomeruli is given in the same vector space as the receptor cell activities. The overall input of a glomerulus follows as the scalar product of the receptor cell activity vector and the vector of the glomerulus' convergence pattern. The proposed coding concept shows how the network of the olfactory bulb succeeds in discriminating odors with high selectivity. It is concluded that sets of mitral cells coding similar odors work very much in the way of mutually inhibited matched filters. This solves one main problem both in olfaction as well as real-time odor detection by an artificial nose, i.e., how the fairly low degree of selectivity of receptor cells or sensors is overcome by the neural network following the receptor stage. The formal description of olfactory coding suggests that quality perception which is invariant under concentration shifts is accomplished by an associative memory in the olfactory bulb.