A gas sensing neural circuit for an olfactory neuron

Abstract

A gas sensor can convert external gas concentration or species into electric voltage or current signals by physical adsorption or chemical changes. As a result, a gas sensor in a nonlinear circuit can be used as a sensitive sensor for detecting external gas signals from the olfactory system. In this paper, a gas sensor and a field-effect transistor are incorporated into a simple FithzHugh–Nagumo neural circuit for capturing and encoding external gas signals. An improved functional neural circuit is obtained, and the effect of gas concentration, gas species and neuronal activity can be discerned as the gate voltage, threshold voltage and activation coefficient of the field-effect transistor, respectively. The gas concentration can affect the neural activities from quiescent to normal working and, finally, to saturation state in bursting, spiking, periodic and chaotic firings with different frequencies. The effects of gas species and neuronal activity on the firing state can also be achieved in this functional neural circuit. In addition, variations in the gate voltage, threshold voltage and activation coefficient can cause switching between different firing modes. These results can be helpful in designing artificial olfactory devices for bionic gas recognition and other coupled systems arising in applied sciences.