Tc. Pearce et al., Stimulus encoding during the early stages of olfactory processing: A modeling study using an artificial olfactory system, NEUROCOMPUT, 38, 2001, pp. 299-306
This paper addresses the issue of how efficient stimulus encoding may be ca
rried out within the early stages of the olfactory system-in particular how
a rate-coding scheme compares to the direct transmission of graded potenti
als in terms of the accuracy of the estimate that an ideal observer may mak
e about the stimulus. We make use of a spiking neuronal model of the early
stages of the olfactory system that is driven by fluorescent microbead chem
osensors in order to compare these two coding schemes. Our results indicate
how the charging time-constants present at the first stages of neuronal in
formation processing within the olfactory bulb directly affects its ability
to accurately reconstruct the stimulus. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All
rights reserved.