Visual and auditory stimuli of high social and ecological importance are processed in the brain by specialized neuronal networks. To date, this has not been demonstrated for olfactory stimuli. By means of positron emission tomography, we sought to elucidate the neuronal substrates behind body odor perception to answer the question of whether the central processing of body odors differs from per...

During alcohol production, large amounts of waste and wastewater are produced. These may have a considerable environmental impact by polluting both water bodies and soil, by causing an adverse climatic effect and odour nuisance. Due to the high concentration of organic matter, both distillery waste and wastewater at the same time do have a great nutrient and energy potential that can be utilise...

The aim of the present research was to investigate the influences of cognition on temporal processing of olfactory information in a health-relevant context. We investigated whether expecting an odor to cause adverse health effects alters perception of that odor. An irritation-free odor (Study 1: H(2)S; Study 2: phenyl ethyl alcohol [PEA]) was presented after which participants expected to exper...

Individual differences in sensitivity to the putative human pheromone androstadienone were investigated in three experiments. In experiment 1, the absolute detection threshold for androstadienone was determined to be 211 micro M using the method of constant stimuli. Detection for the related compound estratetraenol was also investigated but a threshold could not be determined. In experiment 2, ...

BACKGROUND Malaria and alcohol consumption both represent major public health problems. Alcohol consumption is rising in developing countries and, as efforts to manage malaria are expanded, understanding the links between malaria and alcohol consumption becomes crucial. Our aim was to ascertain the effect of beer consumption on human attractiveness to malaria mosquitoes in semi field conditions...

Previous studies have demonstrated that body position can alter auditory sensitivity. Here we demonstrate for the first time that olfactory sensitivity for the commonly used odor phenyl ethyl alcohol (PEA) (rose odor) is also dependent on body position. By using successive dilutions presented in a staircase protocol, we determined olfactory thresholds for PEA in 36 healthy participants (18 wome...

We investigated whether presenting of dilutions of phenyl ethyl alcohol at random succession according to the method of constant stimuli can replace the standard procedure of presenting a various number of dilutions in a staircase paradigm. Forty-six men and 44 women, aged 19-76 years, participated in this study. Phenyl ethyl alcohol was diluted in a ratio of 1:2, starting from 4%. Presentation...

While the effects of early visual deprivation on auditory and tactile functions have been widely studied, little is known about olfactory function in early blind subjects. The present study investigated the potential effect of early blindness on the electrophysiological correlates of passive odour perception. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in eight early blind humans and eight si...