Sex differences in human olfaction: Between evidence and enigma

Brand, Gérard; Millot, Jean-Louis

doi:10.1080/02724990143000045

Cited by 231 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…There is a relatively robust body of evidence that women tend to outperform men in various olfactory-related tests (for reviews see Brand and Millot 2001;Doty and Cameron 2009) and report a greater significance ascribed to olfaction (Havlicek et al 2008). On the other hand, sex differences tend to be smallest in young adults (Doty 1992) and have been reported to be restricted to the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle (Navarrete-Palacios et al 2003).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Olfactory Perception is Positively Linked to Anxiety in Young Adults

et al. 2012

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Abstract. Olfactory abilities show a high degree of inter-individual variability and this could be partly related to personality differences. Here, in two studies, we tested a potential link between personality dimensions and olfactory perception. Sixty-eight (study 1) and a hundred and fifty-six (study 2) young adults completed the Big Five questionnaire and performed the Sniffin' Sticks test for assessing odour threshold, identification, and (in study 2) discrimination. In neither study did we find a significant link between personality dimensions and olfactory identification scores. However, in study 1, we found a significant positive correlation between the neuroticism dimension and olfactory sensitivity. This was mainly due to the anxiety and self-consciousness subscales, which load onto the neuroticism dimension. In a follow-up study, we again found a significant association between anxiety and odour perception, specifically in odour discrimination. Our results indicate that variability in anxiety could partly explain the high inter-individual variation in olfactory perception.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Olfactory Perception is Positively Linked to Anxiety in Young Adults

et al. 2012

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“…After puberty, girls have better olfaction abilities than boys. 17,18 From the age of ϳ40 years, olfaction abilities decrease, which partly explains anorexia in the elderly. 18 The role of olfaction in adults is likely involved in several fields, such as appetite, emotional memory, and sexual bonding.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Olfactory Evaluation in Children: Application to the CHARGE Syndrome

Chalouhi¹,

Faulcon

Bihan-Benjamin

et al. 2005

Pediatrics

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ABSTRACT. Objective. To find an efficient tool for testing olfactory function in children and use it to investigate a group of children with CHARGE (coloboma, congenital heart disease, choanal atresia, mental and growth retardation, genital anomalies, and ear malformations and hearing loss) syndrome.Methods. We adapted for children an olfaction test that had just been validated in an adult French population and investigated a control group of 25 healthy children aged 6 to 13 years. We then tested the olfactory capacity of a group of 14 children with CHARGE syndrome, aged 6 to 18 years. A questionnaire was completed with the parents about their children's feeding difficulties and their ability to recognize odors in everyday life. We recorded and scored the histories of feeding behavior anomalies, the visual and auditory status, and current intellectual levels. MRI of the olfactory tracts and bulbs was analyzed for 9 of 14 children.Results. We showed that healthy children have similar olfactory function to that of the adult control group, which was representative of the general population, without any difference for either gender or age. We also showed that all children with CHARGE syndrome had olfactory deficiency. Half of them were anosmic, and the others had olfactory residual function (hyposmic). We found no association between olfactory deficiency and feeding behavior, visual or auditory impairment, or intellectual level. Parental subjective evaluations were accurate for only half of the group. All of the MRIs showed anomalies of the olfactory tracts and bulbs varying from moderate hypoplasia to complete aplasia, without any relation between the radiologic and the functional results.Conclusions. Olfaction can be assessed in children, even the young and disabled. Our results support the proposition that rhinencephalon anomalies should be included as a major criterion for the diagnosis of CHARGE syndrome. ABBREVIATIONS. CHARGE, coloboma, congenital heart disease, choanal atresia, mental and growth retardation, genital anomalies, and ear malformations and hearing loss; PEA, phenylethylalcohol. O lfaction has always been and remains the most neglected sense in studies of child development and behavior, the main reasons being the poor knowledge concerning the role of olfaction in human development and behavior and the lack of available tools for investigating olfaction, in particular in children. Development of the olfactory system begins very early in the human embryo; olfactory bulbs have their definitive structure at day 56. Then, cells of the olfactory placode differentiate to gonadotropic cells and migrate to the hypothalamic region along the terminal nerve (cranial nerve 0), the olfactory nerve (cranial nerve 1), and the vomeronasal nerve. One part of the olfactory system projects to the anterior part of the hypothalamus for odor perception and discrimination; the other projects to the limbic system and the hippocampus for the behavioral impact of olfaction and olfactory emotional memory. 1 The Jacobson vome...

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Section: Sexmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Overall, studies show that females outperform men in most olfactory tasks (see Brand & Millot, 2001 for a review). However, for odor sensitivity tasks (i.e., threshold), the pattern of findings is conflicting (Brand & Millot, 2001). The National Geographic Smell Survey (1989) conducted by Wysocki and Gilbert revealed that women rated odors as more intense and also exhibited a higher detection accuracy.…”

Section: Sexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Olfactory Function: The Influence of Demographic, Cognitive, and Genetic factors

Hedner¹

2013

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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Olfactory function is affected by demographic, cognitive, and genetic factors. In the present thesis, three empirical studies investigated individual differences in olfactory ability. Study I explored demographic and cognitive correlates in common olfactory tasks; odor detection, odor discrimination, and odor identification. The results indicated that old age influenced performance negatively in all tasks, and that semantic memory proficiency and executive functioning were related to odor discrimination and odor identification performance. No cognitive influence was observed for measurements of olfactory threshold. Using population-based data, Study II investigated a potential influence of the ApoE gene on olfactory identification after controlling for health status, semantic memory, and preclinical and clinical dementia. The main finding was that the ApoE-ɛ4 allele interacted with age, such that older ɛ4-carriers had an impaired odor identification performance relative to older non-carriers. Importantly, the negative ApoE-ɛ4 effect on olfactory proficiency was independent of clinical dementia conversion within five years. Study III investigated the effects of the BDNF val66met polymorphism on olfactory change over a five-year interval, in a communitydwelling sample of young and old age cohorts. The results showed that agerelated decline in olfactory identification was influenced by the BDNF val66met. In middle-aged subjects, no effect of BDNF val66met was observed although older val homozygote carriers showed a selectively larger olfactory decline than the older met carriers. Overall, results suggest that the relative influence of demographic and cognitive factors vary across different olfactory tasks and that two genes (ApoE and BDNF) impact age-related deficits in odor identification. Potential theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed as well as potential limitations of association studies in genomics research.

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Sex differences in human olfaction: Between evidence and enigma

Cited by 231 publications

References 68 publications

Olfactory Perception is Positively Linked to Anxiety in Young Adults

Olfactory Perception is Positively Linked to Anxiety in Young Adults

Olfactory Evaluation in Children: Application to the CHARGE Syndrome

Olfactory Function: The Influence of Demographic, Cognitive, and Genetic factors

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