Decomposition of an odorant in olfactory perception and neural representation

Yuting Ye, Yanqing Wang, Yuan Zhuang, Huibang Tan, Zhentao Zuo, Hanqi Yun, Kaiqi Yuan and Wen Zhou ()
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Yuting Ye: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yanqing Wang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yuan Zhuang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Huibang Tan: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Zhentao Zuo: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Hanqi Yun: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Kaiqi Yuan: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Wen Zhou: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Human Behaviour, 2024, vol. 8, issue 6, 1150-1162

Abstract: Abstract Molecules—the elementary units of substances—are commonly considered the units of processing in olfactory perception, giving rise to undifferentiated odour objects invariant to environmental variations. By selectively perturbing the processing of chemical substructures with adaptation (‘the psychologist’s microelectrode’) in a series of psychophysical and neuroimaging experiments (458 participants), we show that two perceptually distinct odorants sharing part of their structural features become significantly less discernible following adaptation to a third odorant containing their non-shared structural features, in manners independent of olfactory intensity, valence, quality or general olfactory adaptation. The effect is accompanied by reorganizations of ensemble activity patterns in the posterior piriform cortex that parallel subjective odour quality changes, in addition to substructure-based neural adaptations in the anterior piriform cortex and amygdala. Central representations of odour quality and the perceptual outcome thus embed submolecular structural information and are malleable by recent olfactory encounters.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01849-0

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