Department of Food Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA.
Department of Food Science, Zamorano University, Francisco Morazán, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, C.A.
Chem Senses. 2021 Jan 1;46. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjaa079.
There are key unanswered questions when it comes to multicomponent odor discrimination. This study was designed to assess discrimination of odorant mixtures that elicit a singular percept. We collected data to address the following two questions: (1) What odor features do humans notice when attempting to discriminate between subtly different odor mixtures? (2) Are odor mixtures easier to discriminate when an odorant is added, compared with when a component is removed? Using modern aroma chemistry techniques, an odor mixture resembling a generic white wine was constructed. This wine odor mixture was modified using a series of three esters which are commonly found in white wines that vary in chain length and branching. Participants performed a sequence of discrimination tasks for the addition/subtraction of modifiers to the base wine at different concentrations. Only one of the esters (ethyl propanoate) led to a discriminable odor mixture. As concentration of the modifying odorant was increased, discrimination of odor mixtures was first reported because of changes in odor mixture familiarity and then intensity. We found similar sensitivity to changes in odor mixtures regardless whether the modifying compound was added or subtracted, suggesting that perceptual stability of odor mixtures is equally dependent on both imputing missing information (pattern completion) and disregarding extraneous information.
当涉及到多成分气味辨别时，存在一些关键的未解答的问题。本研究旨在评估引发单一感知的气味混合物的辨别能力。我们收集数据来回答以下两个问题：（1）当试图辨别微妙不同的气味混合物时，人类会注意到哪些气味特征？（2）与去除成分相比，添加一种气味物质时，气味混合物是否更容易辨别？使用现代香气化学技术，构建了一种类似于通用白葡萄酒的气味混合物。使用一系列在链长和支化上有所不同的常见于白葡萄酒中的三种酯来修饰这种葡萄酒气味混合物。参与者在不同浓度下对基础葡萄酒添加/减去修饰剂的混合物进行了一系列的辨别任务。只有一种酯（丙酸乙酯）导致可辨别气味混合物。随着修饰气味剂浓度的增加，由于气味混合物熟悉度和强度的变化，首先报告了气味混合物的辨别。我们发现，无论添加还是减去修饰化合物，对气味混合物变化的敏感性相似，这表明气味混合物的感知稳定性同样依赖于对缺失信息的推断（模式完成）和对无关信息的忽略。
