Evaluation of human electroencephalogram change for sensory effects of fragrance

Abstract

Background The stabilizing effect of lavender and the arousal effect of peppermint essential oils are acknowledged and used widely in aromatherapy and the cosmetics industry. However, no evaluation method confirms the effects of essential oils through quantitative and objective electroencephalogram (EEG) results; instead, only a psychological and subjective method exists. Therefore, this study aims to create a new emotional cosmetic evaluation paradigm using EEG values. Moreover, it enables quantitative interpretation of the results in addition to the subjective survey outcomes. Methods For this study, 12 healthy female Korean participants were recruited and three fragrances were used. The EEG results were collected for 3 minutes (1 minute each before, during, and after inhalation of every fragrance). Results The quantitative EEG outcomes indicate changes in the participant's brainwaves before and after inhalation. Significant changes in the EEG were observed. Based on the results, the effects of fragrances were confirmed to be stabilizing for lavender, and arousing for peppermint and coffee aroma. Furthermore, the subjective questionnaire results indicate similar tendency as that of the quantitative EEG results. Conclusion In addition to psychological and subjective assessments, our emotional evaluation method can verify the cosmetic fragrance effects through quantitative and objective results.

Lavender aromatherapy: a systematic review from essential oil extraction and administration to cognitive enhancing effects.

“…Indeed, Saiorwan and colleagues [32] found decrease in autonomic parameters and increase of band power in alpha, beta and theta waves during the lavender inhalation, indicating arousal decrease. These findings are corroborated by one EEG study which reported increased alpha wave after lavender inhalation, suggesting a relaxing effect [48]. Moreover, Diego and colleagues [47] showed a positive correlation between lavender EO inhalation and beta power increase, indicating arousal decrease; in the same study, arousal decline allowed the subjects to better perform sustained attention tasks.…”

“…Moreover, Diego and colleagues [47] showed a positive correlation between lavender EO inhalation and beta power increase, indicating arousal decrease; in the same study, arousal decline allowed the subjects to better perform sustained attention tasks. It is worth noting that Diego and colleagues [47] and Park and colleagues [48] also studied cognitive effects of lavender EO, however these studies were not included in this systematic review because were based on a within-subject design. Moreover, beta power is reported to be also related to less pronounced attentional blink [49] and this supports the hypothesis of a possible causal relation between lavender inhalation, arousal decrease and higher tonic attention performance.…”

Detecting Changes in Cognitive Load Through Audified EEG

“…San Diego, CA [22] CGX© GmbH, Gilching, Germany [25] Emotiv© EMOTIV, San Francisco, CA [17,13] EEGLAB SCCN, La Jolla, CA [137] G-Tec© GmbH, Austria [24] mBrainTrain© Beograd, Serbia [16] Muse TM InteraXon Inc., Toronto, ON [1,23] NeuroElectrics TM Cambridge, MA [15] Neuroscan© Compumedics, Victoria, Australia [18] NeuroSky© NeuroSky Inc, San Jose, CA [21] OpenBCI© Brooklyn, NY [27] Open Vibe©…”

“…EEG is a method of measuring the electrical activity of neuron cells and has been shown to be effective at detecting concussion [10,11,12]. There are various tools available for the detection of EEG, ranging from consumer grade to clinical grade, and costing anywhere from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28]. EEG detection is becoming more available, with more consumer grade devices being made for use at home.…”

Remote Photonic Detection of Human Senses Using Secondary Speckle Patterns

“…Human sensory systems are involved in daily activities, both consciously and unconsciously, and a study of the senses, especially their connection with brain activity, has been gaining in popularity in recent years. Brain activity analysis using electroencephalography (EEG) has received considerable attention [2][3][4][5][6] , particularly in relation to the ve basic human senses: sight 2 , touch 7 , hearing 8,9 , smell [10][11][12][13] and taste 14 . In addition to EEG, a number of optical techniques have also been employed for monitoring human brain activity using image contrast analysis 15,16 and cross-correlation based analysis of a laser speckle imaging 17 .…”