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Hyperbolic Odor-Space

The geometric model underlying Combinatorial Scent Mereology: olfactory receptor binding patterns embed in negatively curved space.

Hyperbolic odor-space is the geometric model underlying Combinatorial Scent Mereology (CSM). The idea: human olfactory perception is structured by a hyperbolic manifold — a space of negative curvature — rather than by a Euclidean feature space.

Olfactory receptor binding patterns form branching similarity hierarchies that embed naturally in negatively curved space [@haddad2008]. Tree-like metric graphs embed quasi-isometrically in hyperbolic spaces, a consequence of Mikhail Gromov’s work on hyperbolic groups [@gromov1987]. This means distances in the OR binding landscape grow exponentially from any reference point, consistent with psychophysical data showing non-metric similarity judgments and triangle inequality violations [@keller2017; @haddad2010].

See Combinatorial Scent Mereology in the biology module for the full mathematical treatment.

Relations

Cites
  • A metric for odorant comparison
  • Hyperbolic groups
  • Predicting human olfactory perception from chemical features of odor molecules
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@misc{emsenn2026-hyperbolic-odor-space,
  author    = {emsenn},
  title     = {Hyperbolic Odor-Space},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {The geometric model underlying Combinatorial Scent Mereology: olfactory receptor binding patterns embed in negatively curved space.},
  url       = {https://emsenn.net/library/neurology/terms/hyperbolic-odor-space/},
  publisher = {emsenn.net},
  license   = {CC BY-SA 4.0}
}