Configural perception of 6-odorant mixtures in newborn rabbits and human adults

International audience

Perceptual Interactions in Complex Odor Mixtures

The perception of everyday odors relies on elemental or configural processing of complex mixtures of odorants. Theoretically, the configural processing of a mixture could lead to the perception of a single specific odor for the mixture; however, such a type of perception has hardly been proven in human studies. Here, we report the results of a sorting task demonstrating that a six-component mixture carries an odor clearly distinct from the odors of its components. These results suggest a blending effect of individual components’ odors in mixtures containing more than three odorants.

Chapter 5 - Perceptual interactions in complex odor mixtures: the blending effect