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Results for “Olfactory Perception”

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PubMed2001

Human responses to propionic acid. II. Quantification of breathing responses and their relationship to perception.

In 20 normal and four anosmic participants, instantaneous inhalation and exhalation flow rates were recorded in response to 15 s stimulations with clean air or propionic acid concentrations (0.16, 1.14, 8.22 and 59.15 p.p.m., v/v) that ranged from peri-threshold for normals to clearly supra-threshold for anosmics. Each odorant/irritant delivery to the face-mask began with an exhalation. This allowed concentration to reach full value before stimulus onset, defined as the point where the participant began to bring the stimulus into the nose by inhalation. Two seconds after this stimulus onset, normals exhibited cumulative inhaled volume (CIV) declines of 39 and 14%, and latencies of 500 and 710 ms, with presentations of 59.15 and 8.22 p.p.m., respectively. With anosmics, 59.15 p.p.m. caused a 19% decline in CIV that began at 730 ms. Examination of the first inhalation after stimulus onset shows that the CIV declines in normals were achieved by a progressive decline in volume (InVol), beginning with a slight drop at 1.14 p.p.m., and a marked decline in duration (InDur) with only the highest concentration. Anosmics exhibited declines in InDur and InVol with only the 59.15 p.p.m. stimulus, and these declines were much more modest than the changes seen in normals. Comparison of these breathing results with perceptual responses from this same experiment demonstrates that: (i) in normals, odor perception rises slightly, but breathing does not change, with the lowest concentration; (ii) the higher breathing sensitivity (declines in InVol) of normals is paralleled by both the higher nasal irritation of these individuals and the presence of odor sensation; (iii) InDur declines in normals only with a stimulus concentration sufficient to cause marked nasal irritation in anosmics; and iv) in anosmics, modest but reliable declines in both InDur and InVol mirror the marked elevation in nasal irritation magnitude seen with only the highest concentration. In view of the failure of prior work to provide evidence that olfactory activation alone can cause any of the breathing changes we observed, we conclude that some breathing parameters are quite useful as rapid and sensitive measures of nasal irritation that arises from activation of nasal trigeminal afferents alone or in combination with the olfactory nerve.

Adult↗

PubMed1992

The neurobiology of filial learning.

Early filial learning evokes clear neural changes in the developing brain. Anatomy and function in the developing olfactory, auditory, and visual systems change following early learning. Since this type of learning seems critical for the survival of the young, the mechanisms of such plasticity should be clear and reliable. In each sensory modality examined, both distinct changes in the brain and the reliable nature of learning through early experience have become evident with experimental analysis.

Animals↗

PubMed2000

Odor perception: multiple chemical sensitivities, chronic fatigue, and asthma.

Patients with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) often report heightened sensitivity to odors. Odor detection thresholds to phenyl ethyl alcohol (PEA) and pyridine (PYR) were evaluated as a measure of odor sensitivity for 33 MCS subjects, 13 chronic fatigue syndrome subjects, 16 asthmatic subjects, and 27 healthy controls. Odor identification ability (based on University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test results) and ratings in response to four suprathreshold levels of PEA and PYR were also assessed. Odor detection thresholds for PEA and PYR and odor identification ability were equivalent for all groups; however, when exposed to suprathreshold concentrations of PEA, MCS subjects reported significantly more trigeminal symptoms and lower esthetic ratings of PEA. No group differences were found in response to suprathreshold concentrations of PYR. In summary, MCS subjects did not demonstrate lower olfactory threshold sensitivity or enhanced ability to identify odors accurately. Furthermore, they were differentiated from the other groups in their symptomatic and esthetic ratings of PEA, but not PYR.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Odor recognition memory is better under bilateral than unilateral test conditions.

Two odor memory tests were administered unilaterally (left and right) and bilaterally to the same set of 24 men and 24 women on two test occasions. These tests were (i) a "multiple-target" test (MTT) in which three target stimuli were selected, after 10-, 30-, and 60-sec retention intervals, from stimulus sets containing both target and distracter stimuli, and (ii) a 9-item "single-target" three-choice test (STT), in which single stimuli were selected from stimuli sets containing two distracters. Overall, odor memory scores were higher under bilateral than unilateral testing, and higher on the second than on the first test session. Unilateral testing resulted in a monotonic delay-related forgetting function. No differences were observed in the odor memory test scores of the left and right sides of the nose, and no significant correlations were present between these scores and scores on a battery non-olfactory memory tests. On the STT, the female, but not the male, subjects demonstrated better performance on the second, than on the first, test session. The results of this study imply that odor memory is facilitated centrally by bilateral activation, and that a memory system may exist for odors which is distinct from other memory systems.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

The hippocampus and transverse patterning guided by olfactory cues.

Normal rats and rats with hippocampal system damage were trained on a novel, olfactory version of the transverse-patterning task that involved the concurrent learning and continued performance of 3 partially ambiguous discrimination problems (A+B-, B+C-, C+A-). Animals with lesions of the fornix or perirhinal-entorhinal cortex acquired at least as rapidly as normal rats these problems presented in sequential blocks of trials involving the same stimulus pair. All groups also performed well on an initial test session when the order of stimulus pair presentations was randomized. Normal rats continued to discriminate appropriately in additional testing sessions with trials presented in random order. By contrast, both groups with hippocampal system damage performed poorly in continued random-order testing. These results extend the generality of the deficit in transverse patterning to the olfactory modality and demonstrate that the deficit is equivalent in magnitude after fornix or perirhinal-entorhinal damage. Findings also suggest that the transverse-patterning problem can be acquired transiently without critical hippocampal involvement, although continued performance relies on hippocampal function.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed1996

The sensory biology of the living jawless fishes: a phylogenetic assessment.

Despite the ancient origins and aberrant appearance of living jawless fishes, none of their features may be assumed to be primitive without comparisons among hagfishes, lampreys, and gnathostomes, and with the nearest relatives of all craniates, the cephalochordates. In this review, the sensory capabilities of lampreys and hagfishes will be compared, and the major features of early craniate sensory evolution will be infered using cladistic methodology and an accepted phylogeny of the hagfishes, lampreys and gnathostomes. Lampreys have well developed olfactory, visual and octavolateralis systems, each of which is known to play a role in lamprey life and behavior. Hagfishes have poorly developed visual and octavolateralis systems, but elaborate olfactory and chemosensory systems. Unfortunately, the natural behavior and lifestyle of hagfishes are poorly known, limiting our understanding of hagfish sensory biology. Both groups of living jawless fishes show mixtures of primitive and secondarily derived sensory features and have few shared derived sensory features that would indicate close relations between the two groups.

Anatomy, Comparative↗

PubMed1989

Courtship behavior of Drosophila genetically or surgically deprived of basiconic sensilla.

The lack of basiconic antennal sensilla in the mutant lozenge was used to assess the role of these olfactory receptors in the courtship behavior of Drosophila melanogaster. Under normal light conditions, lozenge males courted virgin females much less than wild-type males did. However, when visual courtship stimuli were eliminated by studying behavior under dim red light, the two kinds of males courted individual wild-type virgin females with the same intensity, and the latency to copulation was similar. Also, no difference in courtship vigor was observed if the two kinds of males were paired in red light with a mated female. These data suggest that antennal basiconic sensilla are important for neither the perception of the attraction pheromone(s) of virgin females nor the inhibitory pheromone(s) of mated females. Similar assays with males deprived of maxillary palps make it unlikely that the basiconic-like sensilla on these appendages are needed to perceive the attraction pheromones. However, the unexpectedly high courtship activity of palp-deprived males toward mated females suggests that basiconic-like maxillary sensilla may be receptors of inhibitory female compounds.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Do you like the sight or the feel of milk in coffee? Ecology and effortful attention in differential acuity and preference for sensed effects of milk substitute in vended coffee.

A rapid method of discrimination scaling was used to measure individuals' acuity for levels of a complex stimulus perceived through several sensory modalities at once in a familiar context. The stimulus was a replacement for fresh milk used in vended coffee. The two experiments reported here compared the performance of ratings of the coffee's milkiness and creaminess when assessors were limited to the use of visual and/or olfactory cues. Better discrimination by milkiness ratings was observed during normal drinking and in a visual-only condition than when only oronasal or oral cues were available. Ratings relative to each assessor's ideal level of milkiness or creaminess showed diversity between assessor-preferred visual and oral characteristics of the milk substitute. However, instructing the assessor to attend to a particular aspect of the sample did not prevent the use of a better-discriminated characteristic if available to the senses. These results showed that the acceptability of a beverage or food depends more on the perceptible material than on efforts to direct attention to particular aspects.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Effects of ambient odors on reaction time in humans.

The perception of odors is well identified as having strong emotional correlates. The effects of ambient odors on arousal level and task performance have also been suspected but remain poorly assessed in the literature. The present study compared the reaction times of subjects between ambient odor conditions (pleasant and unpleasant) and a no-odor condition. The results showed that the reaction time in simple tasks (responses to visual or auditory stimulation) significantly decreased in the ambient odor conditions (whatever the pleasantness of the odors) compared with the no-odor condition. These results underline the importance of the olfactory environment in human behavior.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed1988

The role of medial and lateral hippocampal perforant path lesions and object distinctiveness in rats' reaction to novelty.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether damage to the medial (MPP) or lateral hippocampal perforant path (LPP) may differentially affect rats' ability to react to novelty or environmental change. Three different types of task were used based on various sets of stimuli; visual/tactile, olfactory, or visual only. The results showed that the lesions produced different responses to different novel stimuli. In contrast to control and MPP animals, LPP rats displayed excessive exploration of the test cage. The results are discussed in terms of impoverished cognitive structure following perforant path disruptions and functional differentiation between MPP and LPP.

Animals↗

PubMed2005

A field-theoretic approach to understanding scale-free neocortical dynamics.

A mesoscopic field-theoretic approach is compared with neural network and brain imaging approaches to understanding brain dynamics. Analysis of high spatiotemporal resolution rabbit electroencephalogram (EEG) reveals neural fields in the form of spatial patterns in amplitude (AM) and phase (PM) modulation of gamma and beta carrier waves that serve to classify EEGs from trials with differing conditioned stimuli (CS+/-). Paleocortex exemplified by olfactory EEG has one AM-PM pattern at a time that forms by an input-dependent phase transition. Neocortex shows multiple overlapping AM-PM patterns before and during presentation of CSs. Modeling suggests that neocortex is stabilized in a scale-free state of self-organized criticality, enabling cooperative domains to form virtually instantaneously by phase transitions ranging in size from a few hypercolumns to an entire hemisphere. Self-organized local domains precede formation of global domains that supervene and contribute global modulations to local domains. This mechanism is proposed to explain Gestalt formation in perception.

Animals↗

PubMed2003

Olfaction and depth of word processing: a magnetoencephalographic study.

Using a whole-cortex magnetoencephalograph, magnetic field changes were recorded to describe brain activities related to simultaneous visual and olfactory processing and to detect odor-related influences on verbal information processing. Words had to be either shallowly (nonsemantic) or deeply (semantic) encoded by healthy young subjects, each of these tasks under two different kinds of olfactory stimulation. After each encoding phase, word recognition performance was tested. First, the odor was randomly associated with some of the study words (simultaneous stimulation; same duration as for words) for both depths of word processing conditions, and second, continuous olfactory stimulation (permanent stimulation) was provided during the whole study phases of both depths of word processing conditions. The statistical analysis of the physiological data revealed evidence of a specific odor-induced effect depending on depth of word processing and kind of olfactory stimulation. Brain activity between about 250 and 450 ms as well as between about 650 and 1000 ms after stimulus onset was found to vary as a function of odor delivery and depth of word processing. In addition, a significant effect of odor stimulation on subsequent word recognition performance occurred in case of simultaneous odor stimulation and semantic word encoding. It is interpreted that in this case, word recognition performance significantly decreased because of the presence of the odor during prior word encoding. Such a behavioral effect was missing in all other conditions. The present psychological and physiological findings support the idea that semantic word encoding is specifically affected by simultaneous olfactory information processing. It is concluded that this phenomenon is due to a competition with cortical regions related to language and olfactory information processing, as suggested by T. S. Lorig (1999, Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 23, 391-398).

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Ambient odors modulate visual attentional capture.

Sudden visual events capture attention involuntarily because they may signal potential threats. Some theoretical accounts consider that the biological significance of these events is established through the limbic structures. Thus, the manipulation of the limbic activity would affect attentional capture. Since these structures are directly linked to the olfactory system, we have tended to modulate their activity with olfactory stimulations. We have examined behavioral performance in a task of attentional capture by luminance under conditions of ambient odors. Our results show that attentional capture is indeed modulated by ambient odors, and that this modulation may depend on the odor's properties.

Adult↗

PubMed1994

Perception of odor mixtures by the spiny lobster Panulirus argus.

We used spiny lobsters (Panulirus argus) in a discrimination learning procedure with aversive conditioning to examine their behavioral discrimination of adenosine-5'-monophosphate (AMP), betaine, L-cysteine and their binary mixtures. Our results show that spiny lobsters can clearly discriminate among binary mixtures and their components. Lobsters aversively conditioned to avoid responding to a binary mixture continued to respond to that mixture's components, and lobsters that were aversively conditioned to avoid responding to a compound tended to continue to respond to binary mixtures containing that compound. Thus, responses of conditioned lobsters to binary mixtures were not usually intermediate between the responses to the mixtures' components, which might be expected for response-matched compounds. This result might arise from any of several factors. First, it might result from mixture interactions in the peripheral olfactory system, if the responses of olfactory receptor neurons to one component of a binary mixture were suppressed by the other component, making the response to the mixture more similar to the suppressing component. Electrophysiological data from a population of 50 singly-recorded olfactory receptor neurons (Daniel and Derby, 1994) do not consistently support this idea. A second possible reason for the behavioral response to a binary mixture not being intermediate between the responses to its components involves higher order processing, such as mixture interactions generated in olfactory interneurons in the CNS (which is known to occur: Derby et al., 1985; Ache, 1989), configural learning or associative processing.

Adenosine Monophosphate↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Sick-building syndrome fatigue as a possible predation defense.

Sick-building syndrome is an illness characterized by fatigue, headache, and upper-respiratory complaints. It is usually associated with modern office buildings, structures with an impervious outer shell and inoperable windows. Poor air quality, specific pollutants, and inadequate ventilation are considered common causes. The ability to smell faint odors requires air that is free of contamination. Human evolutionary ancestors depended on odors for survival. Even the slightest increase in the ability to smell a predator conveyed a distinct, immediate survival advantage. Conversely, an enormous survival advantage would also accrue to the animal that sought protection or avoided activity when this vital olfactory information was unavailable. Such would be the case with fire on the savannah. The foraging, olfactory dependent animal, unable to smell predators because of contaminated air, would be quickly snatched by a keen-sighted carnivore. There exist, however, well-described reflexes from the nose mediated through the trigeminal nerve that discourage activity when these free nerve endings are irritated. This mechanism may serve as a defense against predation. In adulterated atmosphere the animal, subdued by these reflexes, would be less likely to venture forth and, therefore, less vulnerable to predators. Similar reflexes may persist in humans, activated by poor air quality, air ill-suited for the dissemination of odors. I suggest that the human perception of these inhibitory reflexes is the feeling of fatigue associated with the sick building syndrome.

Air Pollution, Indoor↗

PubMed2000

Tissue distribution of the opioid receptor-like (ORL1) receptor.

The ORL1 receptor is a G protein-coupled receptor structurally related to the opioid receptors, whose endogenous ligand is the heptadecapeptide nociceptin/orphanin FQ. In this review, data which have contributed to the mapping of the anatomic distribution of the ORL1 receptor have been collated with an emphasis on their relation to physiological functions. The ORL1 receptor is widely expressed in the central nervous system, in particular in the forebrain (cortical areas, olfactory regions, limbic structures, thalamus), throughout the brainstem (central periaqueductal gray, substantia nigra, several sensory and motor nuclei), and in both the dorsal and ventral horns of the spinal cord. Regions almost devoid of ORL1 receptors are the caudate-putamen and the cerebellum. ORL1 mRNA and binding sites exhibit approximately the same distribution pattern, indicating that the ORL1 receptor is located on local neuronal circuits. The ORL1 receptor is also expressed at the periphery in smooth muscles, peripheral ganglia, and the immune system. The anatomic distribution of ORL1 receptor suggests a broad spectrum of action for the nociceptin/orphanin FQ system (sensory perception, memory process, emotional behavior, etc.).

Animals↗

PubMed1987

Acute alcohol intoxication disrupts brightness but not olfactory conditioning in preweanling rats.

The present experiments tested the effect of acute alcohol administration on Pavlovian conditioning of 21-day-old rats using conditioned stimuli of two different sensory modalities--olfaction, an early developing sensory capacity functional at birth, and vision, a later developing sensory system not becoming functional until approximately 15 days of age. Conditioning and testing were conducted between 30 and 60 min following gastric infusion with either physiological saline or a mildly intoxicating alcohol dose (1.5 g/kg body weight). Brain alcohol levels were observed to remain at a peak and stable concentration during this period (Experiment 1). Alcohol impaired acquisition or expression of conditioned aversions to a visual cue paired with footshock when presented either as a single-element conditioned stimulus or as part of an odor/visual compound stimulus (Experiment 2), but it had no discernible effect on conditioned aversions to an olfactory stimulus that had similarly been paired with footshock (Experiments 2 and 3). The results suggest that alcohol may impair some aspects of learning but spare others, depending perhaps on the particular sensory modality to be conditioned.

Alcoholic Intoxication↗

PubMed2006

Deficits across multiple cognitive domains in a subset of aged Fischer 344 rats.

Rodent models of cognitive aging routinely use spatial performance on the water maze to characterize medial temporal lobe integrity. Water maze performance is dependent upon this system and, as in the aged human population, individual differences in learning abilities are reliably observed among spatially characterized aged rats. However, unlike human aging in which cognitive deficits rarely occur in isolation, few non-spatial learning deficits have been identified in association with spatial impairment among aged rats. In this study, a subset of male aged Fischer 344 rats was impaired both in water maze and odor discrimination tasks, whereas other aged cohorts performed on par with young adult rats in both settings. The odor discrimination learning deficits were reliable across multiple problems. Moreover, these deficits were not a consequence of anosmia and were specific to olfactory learning, as cognitively impaired aged rats performed normally on an analogous non-olfactory discrimination task. These are among the first data to describe an aging model in which individual variability among aged rat cognition occurs across two independent behavioral domains.

Aging↗