Developments in olfactory psychophysics research
Editor Richard C Gerkin
Antagonism in olfactory receptor neurons and its implications for the perception of odor mixtures (2018)
Gautam Reddy, Joseph D Zak, Massimo Vergassola, Venkatesh N Murthy
PubMed: 29687778 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.34958
How can mixtures produce patterns of activation that are as sparse as pure odorants? The authors show that if the strength of activation of ORNs by ligands (given binding) is independent of the binding affinity of the same ligands, i.e. if some mixture components are competitive antagonists, then the number of activated ORNs (and glomeruli) is independent of mixture complexity.