Previous research has demonstrated that ratings of the perceived pleasantness and quality of odors can be modulated by auditory stimuli presented at around the same time. Here, we extend these results by assessing whether the hedonic congruence between odor and sound stimuli can modulate the perception of odor intensity, pleasantness, and quality in untrained participants. Unexpectedly, our res...

Anxiety can either impair or enhance performance depending on the context. Increased sensitivity to threat seems to be an important feature of sensory processing in anxiety since anxious individuals tend to be more attentive to threatening visual stimuli. Evidence of anxiety effects in olfaction is rare; though alterations of olfactory performance in psychiatric patients and some effects of tra...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Odors can elicit a range of behaviors and emotions. Our purpose was to identify regional activation of the human cerebral cortex in response to pleasant (positive hedonic value) and unpleasant (negative hedonic value) odors. METHODS Thirteen neurologically normal adults underwent functional MR imaging of frontal and anterior temporal brain regions with a gradient-echo e...

Emotions are characterized by synchronized changes in several components of an organism. Among them, physiological variations provide energy support for the expression of approach/avoid action tendencies induced by relevant stimuli, while self-reported subjective pleasantness feelings integrate all other emotional components and are plastic. Consequently, emotional responses evoked by odors sho...

BACKGROUND Psychosocial and environmental factors at the workplace play a significant role in building-related symptoms (BRSs). Environmental factors change during summer cooling and winter heating using air-conditioning systems. Thus, significant risk factors in each season need to be clarified. METHODS A nationwide cross-sectional study was conducted during summer in Japan and seasonal diff...

We demonstrate an immediate effect of airborne chemicals on human moods. We collected six groups of underarm odors, respectively, from five prepubertal girls, five prepubertal boys, five college women, five college men, five older women, and five older men. In addition, we collected odors from homes of these donors, making them a seventh group of odor. Three hundred and eight odor observers ran...

An efficient deborylthiolation of aryl- and alkenylborons with thiosulfonates has been achieved under mild conditions using a copper catalyst. All steps of the experimental process were free from unpleasant odors. The mild reaction conditions as well as ready availability of boron compounds and thiosulfonates enabled easy access to an array of sulfides, including those bearing sensitive functio...

It is widely accepted that unconscious processes can modulate judgments and behavior, but do such influences affect one's daily interactions with other people? Given that olfactory information has relatively direct access to cortical and subcortical emotional circuits, we tested whether the affective content of subliminal odors alters social preferences. Participants rated the likeability of ne...

Our natural body odor goes through several stages of age-dependent changes in chemical composition as we grow older. Similar changes have been reported for several animal species and are thought to facilitate age discrimination of an individual based on body odors, alone. We sought to determine whether humans are able to discriminate between body odor of humans of different ages. Body odors wer...

Olfaction has recently been highlighted as a sense poorly connected with language. Odor is difficult to verbalize, and it few qualities that afford mimicry by vision or sound. At the same time, emotion thought be most salient dimension of an odor, could therefore olfactory more easily communicated. We investigated whether sounds imitative innate disgust response can associated unpleasant odors....