Neural correlates of olfactory change detection

Detecting changes in a stream of sensory information is vital to animals and humans. While there have been several studies of automatic change detection in various sensory modalities, olfactory change detection is largely unstudied. We investigated brain regions responsive to both passive and active...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) Fla.), 2005-04, Vol.25 (3), p.969-974
Main Authors: Sabri, Merav, Radnovich, Alexander J., Li, Tie Q., Kareken, David A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Arousal - physiology
Attention - physiology
Brain Mapping
Discrimination Learning - physiology
Dominance, Cerebral - physiology
Female
fMRI
Frontal Lobe - physiology
Gyrus Cinguli - physiology
Habituation, Psychophysiologic - physiology
Humans
Image Enhancement
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Multimodal
Neural Pathways - physiology
Odors
Olfactory change detection
Olfactory stimulation
Oxygen - blood
Pitch Discrimination - physiology
Selective attention
Smell - physiology
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Summary:Detecting changes in a stream of sensory information is vital to animals and humans. While there have been several studies of automatic change detection in various sensory modalities, olfactory change detection is largely unstudied. We investigated brain regions responsive to both passive and active detection of olfactory change using fMRI. Nine right-handed healthy, normosmic subjects (five men) were scanned in two conditions while breathing in synchrony with a metronome. In one condition, subjects mentally counted infrequent odors (Attend condition), whereas in the other condition, subjects' attention was directed elsewhere as they counted auditory tones (Ignore condition). Odors were delivered via a nasal cannula using a computer-controlled air-dilution olfactometer. Infrequently occurring olfactory stimuli evoked significant ( P < .05, corrected) activity in the subgenual cingulate and in central posterior orbitofrontal cortex, but only in the Ignore condition, as confirmed by direct comparison of the Ignore session with the Attend session ( P < .05, corrected). Subgenual cingulate and posterior orbital cortex may therefore play a role in detecting discrepant olfactory events while attention is otherwise engaged in another sensory modality.
ISSN:1053-8119
1095-9572
DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.12.033