Detection of odorants in odour mixtures among healthy people and patients with olfactory dysfunction.

Target odorant detection in mixtures has been shown to become more difficult as the number of background odorants increases and falls below chance level in mixtures with 16 components. Our aim was to investigate target odorant detection in mixtures among healthy people and compare it between dysosmic patients and age- and gender-matched controls. Participants underwent extensive olfactory testing and performed two target odorant detection tasks.