Reduction of costs in biological signalling seems an evolutionary advantage,but recent experiments have shown signalling codes shifted to signals of highcost with a underutilisation of low cost signals. Here I show that errors inthe efficient translation of biological states into signals shift codes tohigher costs, effectively performing a quality control. The statisticalstructure of signal usage is predicted to be of a generalised Boltzmann formthat penalises signals that are costly and sensitive to errors. This predicteddistribution of signal usage against signal cost has two main features: anexponential tail required for cost efficiency and an underutilisation of thelow cost signals required to protect the signalling quality from the errors.These predictions are shown to correspond quantitatively to the experiments inwhich gathering signal statistics is feasible as in visual cortex neurons.
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