Weak universality in sensory tradeoffs

For many organisms, the number of sensory neurons is largely determined during development, before strong environmental cues are present. This is despite the fact that environments can fluctuate drastically both from generation to generation and within an organism's lifetime. How can organisms...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: DeDeo, Simon (Author), Marzen, Sarah E. (Contributor)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society, 2017-06-15T19:58:01Z.
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Online Access:Get fulltext
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100 1 0 |a DeDeo, Simon  |e author 
100 1 0 |a Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics  |e contributor 
100 1 0 |a Marzen, Sarah E.  |e contributor 
700 1 0 |a Marzen, Sarah E.  |e author 
245 0 0 |a Weak universality in sensory tradeoffs 
260 |b American Physical Society,   |c 2017-06-15T19:58:01Z. 
856 |z Get fulltext  |u http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109918 
520 |a For many organisms, the number of sensory neurons is largely determined during development, before strong environmental cues are present. This is despite the fact that environments can fluctuate drastically both from generation to generation and within an organism's lifetime. How can organisms get by by hard coding the number of sensory neurons? We approach this question using rate-distortion theory. A combination of simulation and theory suggests that when environments are large, the rate-distortion function-a proxy for material costs, timing delays, and energy requirements-depends only on coarse-grained environmental statistics that are expected to change on evolutionary, rather than ontogenetic, time scales. 
520 |a National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship Program 
520 |a University of California, Berkeley (Chancellor's Fellowship) 
546 |a en 
655 7 |a Article 
773 |t Physical Review E