3,301 research outputs found
Categorical Dimensions of Human Odor Descriptor Space Revealed by Non-Negative Matrix Factorization
In contrast to most other sensory modalities, the basic perceptual dimensions of olfaction remain unclear. Here, we use non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) – a dimensionality reduction technique – to uncover structure in a panel of odor profiles, with each odor defined as a point in multi-dimensional descriptor space. The properties of NMF are favorable for the analysis of such lexical and perceptual data, and lead to a high-dimensional account of odor space. We further provide evidence that odor dimensions apply categorically. That is, odor space is not occupied homogenously, but rather in a discrete and intrinsically clustered manner. We discuss the potential implications of these results for the neural coding of odors, as well as for developing classifiers on larger datasets that may be useful for predicting perceptual qualities from chemical structures
Matrix completion and extrapolation via kernel regression
Matrix completion and extrapolation (MCEX) are dealt with here over
reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs) in order to account for prior
information present in the available data. Aiming at a faster and
low-complexity solver, the task is formulated as a kernel ridge regression. The
resultant MCEX algorithm can also afford online implementation, while the class
of kernel functions also encompasses several existing approaches to MC with
prior information. Numerical tests on synthetic and real datasets show that the
novel approach performs faster than widespread methods such as alternating
least squares (ALS) or stochastic gradient descent (SGD), and that the recovery
error is reduced, especially when dealing with noisy data
- …