Sense of smell disorder and health-related quality of life.

Objectives: To compare health-related quality of life and depression between individuals with an inability to smell (anosmia) and a comparison group of individuals with a normal sense of smell.

Methods: Ninety individuals from an anosmia organization (anosmia based on self-report) were compared to 89 individuals with a normal sense of smell. The SF-36 and Beck Depression Inventory-II-NL (BDI-II-NL) were administered, along with the Questionnaire for Olfactory Dysfunction (QOD) to assess the degree of problems in daily life related to the smell impairment.

Food perception with age and its relationship to pleasantness.

Differences between elderly subjects (n = 46, 61-86 years) and young subjects (n = 36, 18-25 years) in food perception and food liking were investigated. Intensity and liking ratings were assessed for custard dessert, in which flavor enrichment, textural change, and irritant addition were incorporated as strategies to compensate for sensory losses with increasing age. The sensory acuity (taste, olfaction, irritation, chewing efficiency) of both young and elderly subjects was measured with the help of different sensitivity tests.

Compensation for age-associated chemosensory losses and its effect on the pleasantness of a custard dessert and a tomato drink.

Differences between elderly subjects (n=52, 60-85 years) and young subjects (n=55, 18-35) in their food liking and their olfactory capability were investigated. Two food systems were used: custard desserts and tomato drinks. Flavor enhancement/enrichment, textural change, and/or irritant addition were incorporated as compensatory strategies into these foods.

Dissociating pleasantness and intensity with quinine sulfate/sucrose mixtures in taste.

Independent experimental manipulation of subjective intensity and hedonic tone is required if one wants to study their separate effects on brain activity and behavior. This is problematic because hedonic tone and subjective intensity are related, leading to a pleasantness change each time the stimulus intensity is altered. In the present study, a solution to this problem was explored by combining a pleasant-tasting substance (sucrose) and a bad-tasting substance (quinine sulfate) into a number of different isointense mixtures.

Setting occupational exposure limits in humans: contributions from the field of experimental psychology.

Psychophysical methods from the field of experimental psychology are evaluated for their utility in the derivation of occupational exposure limits (OELs) for volatile chemicals based on acute sensory irritation in humans. The lateralization threshold method, which involves the localization of trigeminal vapor to the stimulated nostril, is evaluated for its underlying assumptions, reliability and validity. Whole body exposures, on the other hand, which involve the controlled, ambient exposure of human subjects to the irritant at one or a series of concentrations for an extended period are also discussed.

Comparison times are longer for hedonic than for intensity judgements of taste stimuli.

Response times of intensity and hedonic comparisons were determined in a within-subjects experimental design. Forced-choice paired comparisons of orange lemonades with various concentrations of added quinine sulfate were made by 48 subjects. Depending on experimental condition, the subjects had to focus either on intensity or on pleasantness and give their responses as fast as possible.

Modeling panel detection frequencies by queuing system theory: an application in gas chromatography olfactometry.

In continuous vigilance tasks, the number of coincident panel responses to stimuli provides an index of stimulus detectability. To determine whether this number is due to chance, panel noise levels have been approximated by the maximum coincidence level obtained in stimulus-free conditions. This study proposes an alternative method by which to assess noise levels, derived from queuing system theory (QST).

Sensory evaluation of character impact components in an apple model mixture.

Food aromas generally are complex mixtures of volatiles. In the present study, we investigated the joint effects of hexyl acetate, trans-2-hexenal and 1-hexanol on the multi-attribute perception of an apple aroma. The first two substances were identified earlier as positive contributors to the apple aroma (high character impact), whereas the third component was identified as an irrelevant or negative contributor (low character impact).