Viewing Olfactory Affective Responses Through the Sniff Prism: Effect of Perceptual Dimensions and Age on Olfactomotor Responses to Odors

Abstract

Sniffing, which is the active sampling of olfactory information through the nasal cavity, is part of the olfactory percept. It is influenced by stimulus properties, affects how an odor is perceived, and is sufficient (without an odor being present) to activate the olfactory cortex. However, many aspects of the affective correlates of sniffing behavior remain unclear, in particular the modulation of volume and duration as a function of odor hedonics. The present study used a wide range of odorants with contrasted hedonic valence to test: (1) which psychophysical function best describes the relationship between sniffing characteristics and odor hedonics (e.g., linear, or polynomial); (2) whether sniffing characteristics are sensitive to more subtle variations in pleasantness than simple pleasant-unpleasant contrast; (3) how sensitive sniffing is to other perceptual dimensions of odors such as odor familiarity or edibility; and (4) whether the sniffing/hedonic valence relationship is valid in other populations than young adults, such as the elderly. Four experiments were conducted, using 16–48 odorants each, and recruiting a total of 102 participants, including a group of elderly people. Results of the four experiments were very consistent in showing that sniffing was sensitive to subtle variations in unpleasantness but not to subtle variations in pleasantness, and that, the more unpleasant the odor, the more limited the spontaneous sampling of olfactory information through the nasal cavity (smaller volume, shorter duration). This also applied, although to a lesser extent, to elderly participants. Relationships between sniffing and other perceptual dimensions (familiarity, edibility) were less clear. It was concluded that sniffing behavior might be involved in adaptive responses protecting the subject from possibly harmful substances.

Influence of the human body odor compound HMHA on face perception

“…This is consistent with previous studies reporting women's stronger negative hedonic responses to odors of the axilla, of breath and of vaginal secretions (Doty et al, 1982(Doty et al, , 1978(Doty et al, , 1975Stevenson & Repacholi, 2003), but also males' desensitization to odors they are exposed to through their own body odors (Hummel et al, 2005). Olfactomotor measures were fully in line with the pleasantness ratings, since women also had shorter sniff durations than men in response to HMHA: indeed, sniff duration and odor pleasantness are usually negatively correlated (Ferdenzi et al, 2015b;Prescott et al, 2010). We cannot exclude that this sex difference in the perception of the odor could have reduced the hypothesized potential positive effect of facial attractiveness ratings of women.…”

Gastrointestinal Interoception in Eating Disorders: Charting a New Path

“…Though less studied than visual cues, responses to smells may be particularly important for gastrointestinal predictive processing. For example, parotid salivary secretion (the main component of appetitive salivary anticipation) depends upon exposure to olfactory signals [ 90 ], and olfactomotor responses to odors vary according to perceptions of pleasantness [ 91 ]. Hedonic ratings of food smells are associatively learned and depend upon the food- and hunger-related context [ 92 ].…”

Judgements of attractiveness of the opposite sex and nostril differences in self-rated mood: The effects of androstenol

“…However, like ourselves, these authors did not observe any difference between nostrils in ratings of pleasantness for any of the odours they used, though other authors have done so (Dijksterhuis et al, 2002;Herz et al, 1999). The presence and/or direction of any olfactory asymmetry may depend upon the extent to which an odour is familiar or unfamiliar (see Savic & Berglund, 2000) and possibly on the degree of pleasantness of the substance used (see Ferdenzi et al, 2015).…”

“…Consequently, any change in duration, volume, airflow or number of sniffs might produce a change in perception of an odour (Mainland & Sobel, 2006, p. 183;Ferdenzi, Fournel, Thévenet, Coppin, & Bensafi, 2015). Our pilot work suggested that people do not spontaneously maintain a constant sniff over successive presentations of a stimulus (see Ferdenzi, Poncelet, Rouby, & Bensafi, 2014).…”