McNamara A M, Magidson P D, Linster C
Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Behav Neurosci. 2007 Oct;121(5):1132-6. doi: 10.1037/0735-7044.121.5.1132.
Some controversy still exists as to how binary odorant mixtures are behaviorally perceived, despite many studies aimed at understanding this phenomenon. Binary mixture perception by rodents is a first step in elucidating how more complex odor blends may be perceived. Research thus far has examined how the degree of component similarity, olfactory receptor overlap, relative concentration of components, and even olfactory enrichment affect the behavioral perception of binary mixtures. These studies have aimed to categorize binary mixtures into 1 of 3 rigid categories, but often the results conflict as to which category a particular mixture belongs. In the present article, the authors used a habituation/discrimination paradigm to determine whether rats' perception of one component of a binary mixture of either perceptually similar or dissimilar components changed when the concentration of both components was varied together. The authors found that perception of a binary mixture changed with changing component concentration, such that one binary mixture could be categorized differently depending on component intensity.
尽管有许多旨在理解这一现象的研究，但关于二元气味混合物在行为上是如何被感知的仍存在一些争议。啮齿动物对二元混合物的感知是阐明如何感知更复杂气味混合物的第一步。迄今为止的研究已经考察了成分相似程度、嗅觉受体重叠、成分相对浓度，甚至嗅觉富集如何影响二元混合物的行为感知。这些研究旨在将二元混合物分为三个严格类别中的一类，但对于特定混合物属于哪一类，结果往往相互矛盾。在本文中，作者使用了习惯化/辨别范式来确定，当二元混合物中两种成分的浓度同时变化时，大鼠对感知上相似或不相似成分的二元混合物中一种成分的感知是否会发生变化。作者发现，二元混合物的感知随着成分浓度的变化而变化，这样一种二元混合物根据成分强度的不同可以被归为不同类别。
