Department of Food Science, University of Tennessee, 2510 River Drive, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA.
Gösta Ekman Laboratory, Department of Psychology Stockholm University, Frescati hagväg 9, Stockholm, Sweden.
Chem Senses. 2021 Jan 1;46. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjab025.
Olfactory research in humans has largely focused on odors perceived via sniffing, orthonasal olfaction, whereas odors perceived from the mouth, retronasal olfaction, are less well understood. Prior work on retronasally presented odors involves animal models and focus mainly on odor sensitivity, but little is known about retronasal olfactory perception and cognition in humans. In this study, we compared orthonasal and retronasal odor presentation routes to investigate differences in odor descriptions and evaluations. Thirty-six individuals participated in a within-subjects study using twelve odors (varying in pleasantness and edibility) in perceptual and semantic tasks. Orthonasal presentation was associated with a better ability to identify odors, and with more concrete (and source-based) language. Exploratory analyses revealed that whereas orthonasal odors were described with words that had visual associations, retronasal odors were described with words that had interoceptive associations. Interestingly, these route-dependent differences in descriptor usage were not explained by differences in sensitivity and intensity, suggesting instead a cognitive and linguistic processing difference between odors presented orthonasally and retronasally. Our results indicate that olfaction is, in fact, a dual sense, in which the routes change the perception of an odor.
人类的嗅觉研究主要集中在通过嗅觉感知的气味上，即鼻前嗅觉，而口腔感知的气味，即鼻后嗅觉，了解较少。先前关于鼻后呈现气味的研究涉及动物模型，主要关注的是气味敏感性，但对于人类鼻后嗅觉感知和认知知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们比较了鼻前和鼻后气味呈现途径，以研究气味描述和评价的差异。36 名个体参与了一项使用 12 种气味（气味的愉悦度和可食用性不同）的知觉和语义任务的被试内研究。鼻前呈现与更好的气味识别能力以及更具体（和基于来源）的语言相关。探索性分析表明，虽然鼻前气味的描述是用具有视觉联想的词语，但鼻后气味的描述是用具有内在感觉联想的词语。有趣的是，这些途径依赖性的描述符使用差异不能用敏感性和强度的差异来解释，这表明鼻前和鼻后呈现的气味在认知和语言处理上存在差异。我们的结果表明，嗅觉实际上是一种双重感觉，其途径会改变对气味的感知。
