Relationship Between Psychophysiological Responses to Aversive Odors and Nutritional Status During Normal Aging.

Psychophysiological responses to disgusting and pleasant smells are one of the most important aspects of olfaction. These emotional signals can constitute an alert against toxic substances, and they may play a major role in food selection and nutritional intake. The aim of this study was to test this hypothesis by examining whether individual physiological responses to odors could predict the subject's nutritional status.

Expertise shapes domain-specific functional cerebral asymmetry during mental imagery: the case of culinary arts and music.

Mental imagery in experts has been documented in visual arts, music and dance. Here, we examined this issue in an understudied art domain, namely, culinary arts. Previous research investigating mental imagery in experts has reported either a stronger involvement of the right hemisphere or bilateral brain activation.

Individual Differences in Verbal and Non-Verbal Affective Responses to Smells: Influence of Odor Label Across Cultures.

Olfactory perception is highly variable from one person to another, as a function of individual and contextual factors. Here, we investigated the influence of 2 important factors of variation: culture and semantic information. More specifically, we tested whether cultural-specific knowledge and presence versus absence of odor names modulate odor perception, by measuring these effects in 2 populations differing in cultural background but not in language.

Altered Affective Evaluations of Smells in Alzheimer's Disease.

Background: Studies of olfaction in Alzheimer's disease (AD) mainly focused on deficits in odor detection and identification, with very few investigations of olfactory emotional changes and their consequences for hedonics.

Objective: The aim of the present study was to characterize affective evaluations of odors in AD patients.

Methods: To this end, 20 AD patients and 20 matched controls were tested.

Application of the European Test of Olfactory Capabilities in patients with olfactory impairment.

A central issue in olfaction concerns the characterization of loss of olfactory function: partial (hyposmia) or total (anosmia). This paper reports the application in a clinical setting of the European Test of Olfactory Capabilities (ETOC), combining odor detection and identification. The study included three phases.