Figure 3. Response properties of the olfactory reception model.

(A) Temporal properties. Inset: concentration of activated receptors, R ^*(t), as a function of time for single pulses of pheromone of fixed duration (0.4 s) and different intensities L _air (1, 5, 10 and 20 nM). The maximum of R ^*(t) is reached slightly after the end of the stimulation. The prolongation of the falling time with increasing intensities is quantified by the half-fall time, τ, as a function of R ^* at the end of stimulation. (B) Stimulus-response function R ^*(L _air) for single pulses of the same duration as in (A). This curve depends on the temporal resolution and the choice of the response intensity. (C) Optimal cumulative distribution function of the responses, F_R(R ^*), determined by maximizing the information transfer per average half-time (see Methods). The functions R ^*(L _air) and F_R(R ^*) were used for calculating the optimal stimulus probability distribution (shown in Figure 5B).