To detect new odors, fruit fly brains improve on a well-known computer algorithm
It might seem like fruit flies would have nothing in common with computers, but Assistant Professor Saket Navlakha and collaborators from Salk and UC San Diego found that fruit flies and computers identify novel information in similar ways.
The work not only sheds light on an important neurobiological problem—how organisms detect new odors—but also could improve algorithms for novelty detection in computer science.
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