As a chemical sense, the molecular structure of an odor determines whether and how it is perceived by humans. However, a clear stimulus-percept mapping as in other sensory systems is yet unknown and studies with large psychophysical datasets remain scarce. The aim of this study is to investigate the ways in which measures of human odor perception are related to the chemical properties of odor molecules and the extent to which personality traits and experience with odors influence them.
To achieve these goals, a sample of 1200 healthy young participants receive a set of ten out of 74 monomolecular odors, which differ in their position in a physicochemical space of odors. The odors are first freely described and then rated according to perceptual dimensions such as pleasantness, intensity, and familiarity. In order to account for interinvididual differences, participants fill in questionnaires about their personality, odor significance and socio-demographic background.
The results from the first 500 study participants will be discussed focussing on relations to chemical structure as well as interinvididual differences in perception.
Antonie studied Psychology at TU Dresden from 2014 to 2020. From 2018-2020 she worked as student assistant at the Department of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic (Medical Faculty TU Dresden). During that time she studied the influence of olfactory processing on emotions and characteristics of affective touch perception. For her Master thesis she investigated the autoregressive influence of symptom severity and personality pathology on the effectiveness of inpatient psychotherapeutic treatment using structural equation modeling. In June 2020 she joined the Chair of Materials Science to work in the Olfactorial Perceptronics project, which is a cooperation with the Center of Smell and Taste and the Department of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic of University Hospital Dresden aiming at establishing an interdisciplinary research network to develop electronic sensors that enable artificial olfaction.
As a chemical sense, the molecular structure of an odor determines whether and how it is perceived by humans. However, a clear stimulus-percept mapping as in other sensory systems is yet unknown and studies with large psychophysical datasets remain scarce. The aim of this study is to investigate the ways in which measures of human odor perception are related to the chemical properties of odor molecules and the extent to which personality traits and experience with odors influence them.
To achieve these goals, a sample of 1200 healthy young participants receive a set of ten out of 74 monomolecular odors, which differ in their position in a physicochemical space of odors. The odors are first freely described and then rated according to perceptual dimensions such as pleasantness, intensity, and familiarity. In order to account for interinvididual differences, participants fill in questionnaires about their personality, odor significance and socio-demographic background.
The results from the first 500 study participants will be discussed focussing on relations to chemical structure as well as interinvididual differences in perception.
Antonie studied Psychology at TU Dresden from 2014 to 2020. From 2018-2020 she worked as student assistant at the Department of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic (Medical Faculty TU Dresden). During that time she studied the influence of olfactory processing on emotions and characteristics of affective touch perception. For her Master thesis she investigated the autoregressive influence of symptom severity and personality pathology on the effectiveness of inpatient psychotherapeutic treatment using structural equation modeling. In June 2020 she joined the Chair of Materials Science to work in the Olfactorial Perceptronics project, which is a cooperation with the Center of Smell and Taste and the Department of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic of University Hospital Dresden aiming at establishing an interdisciplinary research network to develop electronic sensors that enable artificial olfaction.
