Figure 1. Dynamic Range Stitching.
One strategy to cover a wide overall intensity with a sensory system is to stitch individual coding elements together such that their more limited individual dynamic ranges combine to cover the total range of interest. This particular collection of 5 sigmoidal input/output functions is capable of collectively and equivalently encoding intensities from near 0 dB up to 100 dB, although each individual function would only be able to encode a relatively narrow range of intensities.